Foundations in Scarlet (Renegades Saga, Book 8)
by Renegades Inc
Summary: As the Imperium burns, Horus Lupercal calls a gathering to plan his war against the Chaos Emperor, and the peace that will come after. What was intended as a show for the remembrancers and a venue for sealing alliances will, however, be a more interesting - and more bloody - experience than anyone had planned. Written by VulkansNodosaurus, 2013-14. Takes place early 004.M31.
1. Prologue: Sanguinius

The _Red Tear_ , the mighty flagship of the Ninth "Blood Angels" Space Marine Legion, glided through the surface of reality. As if on cue, the stars snapped back.

In the core of the great vessel, where the starship's shifting out of Warp was nothing more than a slight change of psychic pressure, a meditation chamber hung. Within it, an angel perched. He was never more avian than in this place, and yet his visage did not suggest a bird. It suggested perfection.

Sanguinius knelt in the private chamber, gazing into omnieternity; yet the future was more elusive than usual, and the stars guided him backwards instead of forwards. There was wisdom in reflecting on one's actions, the angel thought.

There was wisdom in-

* * *

The stare of a disheveled beast.

Angron, the Red Angel, did not look like a Primarch now. He barely even looked sane. Yet his butcher's glare concealed an understanding, a momentary, full understanding of the way the universe worked. Seven brothers stood around a golden self-called god; six stood accepting. And as the Emperor laid out his doctrine, Angron stabbed the poisoned spear he was holding as a gift into his father's heart.

 _His father said too much._

* * *

The pyramids of Prospero, intact.

They stood, and in front of them Magnus the Red, the Crimson King, wove the last of the threads in the spell that would sunder the planet of the sorcerers from a universe gone mad. Roboute Guilliman was at his left side, holding the banner of fallen Macragge, the banner of a wild dream called Imperium Secundus. Sanguinius himself was at his right, four bands of mourning on his arm- for his father, for his brothers, for his homeworld and for his Legion.

 _His brother stayed loyal._

* * *

Chambers buried under sand.

The fortress-monastery of Baal was ruined forever, now; the attack of the World Eaters had leveled the planet. In a deep catacomb, the renegade Warmaster was tracing scorch marks towards two bodies lying tangled in the dust. The Red Angel and the Blood Angel, utterly indistinguishable in death after Chaos consumed the former, and the Flaw the latter.

 _His father feared him enough to send the executioner._

* * *

The nanostructure of gold.

The Custodians' gleaming, elaborate armor surrounded the indistinguishable Emperor as the core of humanity prepared for war. Above, the heavens screamed with the final invasion, even as Amon handed Constantine Valdor Arbilent. The Emperor of Mankind, the God of Order, chuckled.

 _His uncle was assassinated._

* * *

The war rooms of Macragge.

Roboute Guilliman stood side-by-side with seven-winged Emperor Sanguinius, glaring at the map of the galaxy, a jagged line separating Imperium Secundus from the endless Warp storms of Terra. A wolf skull marked the last battle of Horus Lupercal. The Mark of Prospero was running, still going strong, on the massive clock dominating the chamber's rear wall; it showed a time two thousand millennia from war's dawn.

 _His brother compromised with the Ultimate Warrior._

* * *

Skull-filled catacombs.

Mortarion and Magnus stared at each other over the body of eight fallen Astartes in horned leaden-gray armor, violently gesticulating. The body of the greatest Eldar warlock was thrown off to the side, head crushed. In the skies, an aphotic sphere burned on its way into the system's star, the first casualty of a total war between humanity and the Eldar.

 _The Eight Swords fell._

* * *

The last broken promise of a traitor.

A Death Guard in decorated armor hung from the vaulted arches of the flagship, suspended by the feet. His father stared at him in disgust- tempered only by the knowledge that the heresy had been stopped before deep damage was done- as the Captain muttered a final curse, then dropped to the pit below. A faint buzzing arose from the hole, then calmed.

 _The spy was uncovered earlier._

* * *

Sanguinius rose once more, wings fluttering upright. He had seen enough; even to a Primarch, observing what could have been was disturbing. Besides, there were more important tasks at hand.

The Angel swung the door open, revealing his brother.

"Horus," Sanguinius said with a grin. "It is good to see you again, in the real."

The Warmaster smiled, and the brothers embraced, a small crystal of serenity in the writhing ocean of the Milky Way.


	2. Introduction

It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, led by the former imperial Warmaster Horus, are beginning their campaigns against the corrupted Imperium of Man.

Against them, the nigh-immortal Emperor waits on his Golden Throne. Allied with him are the four Chaos Gods, eldritch nightmares thirsting for human suffering. The Space Marines, once the Imperium's finest soldiers, are divided. Now, on the jungle-covered Death World of Catachan, Horus Lupercal has called a council to bring unity to his ragged Coalition. Joining him is his closest brother, the angelic Sanguinius, as well as the Mechanicum's tech-pirests, the Imperial Army's unaugmented soldiers, and luminaries from throughout the Imperium.

Yet nothing worthwhile is easy in war. In such an important hour, the Imperium and its allies have no desire for the gathering to succeed, and other, more distant forces play their own hands to unknown ends. What is more, Sanguinius and his Legion have their own hidden troubles. And so the Council of Catachan - as the galaxy - is descending into interesting times.

The screams and pleas of the innocent will have no effect - not anymore. The age of debate and enlightenment is over. The dream of empire has ended.

The nightmare has begun.


	3. Chapter One

Before the Imperium came to the Baal system, it was - by appearances - just another insignificant peak of the human diaspora. Indeed, it was less than that, as all three worlds of Baal were - in the end - radioactive wastelands, ones whose inhabitants were barely aware of their former glory.

And yet… and yet, even before Sanguinius, there was something about Baal. Perhaps it was eternity. Across the shifting radioactive sands, within dusty tunnels left over from the first terraforming, through the skies - crystal-clear, near-black skies, for Baal's atmosphere was thin - there was a unique bind to the power of deep time. And to be sure, people were aware of the entropic end of everything; yet they were aware, too, that there were places not bound by the whims of thermodynamics (the first order of which was the space some called the Great Ocean), that there was hope of trueternity yet.

Hope - first among sins, according to Macipize.

And Sanguinius had only confirmed that bind. For the Angel, it was said, had been shaped by two designs - his father's and Baal's. The Emperor had given to Sanguinius nobility and fury, honor and indomitability. Baal granted him distance and time, separation and foresight.

Some Primarchs had whined on the possibility of an end to the Crusade. Others had merely feared it. But though Sanguinius knew fear, he had never felt it about the conclusion of the Great Crusade - at least, not visibly. Once, Dar Nakir - Twenty-Fourth Captain of the Ninth Legion - had assumed that Sanguinius had always looked beyond the petty confines of the galaxy. Once, Dar Nakir had assumed that the Crusade would be infinite in both time and space.

Now, of course, the things he assumed Sanguinius had seen were quite different.

Nakir glared at the green sphere of Catachan, doing his best to intimidate the planet. His best was, of course, not good enough. Thus, distractions.

"Nakir," Captain An Xinui of the 26th Company warned. "You're scaring the dignitaries."

"I'm thinking about Macipize," Nakir replied. "I suspect they have reason to be scared."

Xinui walked up to Nakir's side. "Macipize was wrong, you know. Imperial Truth and all that."

"Was he? If anything is going to confirm the cynic, this war is it. The Imperial Truth is imploding, over half the Legions - including us - have raised the banner of rebellion, and those that haven't are engaging in atrocities three times worse than the nadir of the Night Lords. Except the Night Lords, which are ten times worse than their previous nadir."

"And yet the fire of humanity still burns. Or however you like to phrase it."

Nakir flexed his shoulders. "It doesn't matter. The idea is, we have a war to fight - why, exactly, is half the Legion gathered here anyway? I should be killing people."

"Someone needed to supervise the Mechanicum."

Nakir chuckled and continued staring.

"In any case - " Xinui began, even as Nakir noticed a female tech-priest approaching the Space Marines.

"Excuse me," she asked Nakir, "which way are the Raldorine Halls?"

"Straight ahead," Nakir said with a turn - regardless of his possible madness, he wasn't rude. Not usually, at least. "The escalator to our right leads straight into a long hallway; a kilometer and, er, two hundred and seventy-six meters into it, there's a giant scarlet door on the left. That leads into the Raldorines, Madam - "

"Magos Salaia Kerme. Thank you!"

"You've memorized the directions," Xinui noted as the Magos departed. "Impressive."

"I've been asked before," Nakir said. "By - as it happens - Salaia Kerme."

An Xinui blinked.

"I think," Nakir ventured, "that we should go to the Raldorines. It could be… interesting."

"Why does a tech-priest need directions anyhow? Don't they all have cogitators?"

"As I said. Interesting."

Xinui blinked again, and Nakir grinned.

To his credit, Xinui pulled Nakir along rather rapidly, though still keeping far behind probably-not-Kerme. The Blood Angels strode through the grand hallway, Nakir making note of the recent redecorations. It all seemed somewhat less ethereal than a few months ago, more… secular. Fewer metaphorical murals of battles past; more busts of the great Legion heroes. The mere mention of ritual was frowned upon.

A secular Imperium, of course, for a secular future, but Nakir couldn't help but suspect that they were breaking with tradition a bit too much, making Guilliman's error.

The Captains trekked through the hallway, heading towards the massive doors to the Raldorine Halls. First Captain Raldoron had, of course, resisted the honor; but he'd found it preferable to having an entire ship named after him, and so the name remained.

"Is it an assassin?" Xinui wondered. "And if so, why aren't they heading somewhere closer to the important people?"

"Everyone here is important enough to kill. Besides - " Nakir unclipped his helmet and punched a few lines into it, then glanced into the interior - "the Raldorine Halls are the meeting ground for the Mechanicum contingent. They'll choose their representatives to the Great Council here."

"Which means that Kane himself will be present."

"Kane?"

Xinui let out an exaggerated sigh at Nakir's feigned ignorance, but cut it short as the 24th Captain slammed open the door into the Raldorines. It revealed an expanse of massive arches, each one leading into a separate room; they surrounded a semicircle filled with tables, cogitators, and so many tech-priests that even a normal human would be hard-pressed to pass through by simple squeezing. Astartes, even unarmored, would require another method.

Xinui shoved a couple of unfortunate Adepts out of the way as he stomped up to the massive figure dominating the semicircle. He stood as tall as an Astarte himself, and indeed for a moment Nakir had thought it was a Techmarine; but he was too far from the human form to fit into power armor. Mechanical appendages snaked around him, a large cooling tower rose from his head, and a screen on his abdomen showed the vast numbers of guests, marked by phenomenally small text.

"Captain Dar Nakir, Captain An Xinui, welcome."

"Fabricator-General Zagreus Kane," Xinui said, and bowed. Nakir was too stunned to do likewise- this was the commander of Mars?- but gave a nod.

"Has a problem emerged?"

"Could you call Magos Salaia Kerme here?"

Kane gave no visible sign of affirmation, but a moment later stated, "The command has been sent. So, how is the Legion?"

"Divided," Nakir said. "One half is killing xenos and Imperials; the other is providing security to this conclave."

"Council," Xinui put in.

"Conclave. Anyhow, I'm not sure why I'm in the latter half and not the former, but duty and all that."

The three figures stood in silence for a second. Kane broke the impasse. "Magos Kerme. And- er-"

Two Adepts - not as augmented as Kane, and therefore still appearing more human than robotic - came up to their leader. Both looked rather slug-like, with a large metal tail sticking out from their backs. More disturbingly, both looked identical.

"Left one is real," Kane said, and raised a weapon-limb. Suddenly, the right "Kerme" rippled, even as one of Kane's tentacles slammed upwards to grab her. Nakir unclipped his chainsword, running towards the silvery mass, pushing into it; Kane's limb passed right through the false Magos; Xinui blinked while drawing -

The false Kerme contracted in pain, and Nakir flicked the momentary electric discharge custom-built into his blade. Suddenly, the polymorphine gave way, and a normal human being in a skintight black suit lay on the floor, bleeding to death.

The Astartes stared at it.

"Clade Callidus," Kane commented. "A sect of Imperial assassins. They use the compound polymorphine to assume the forms of their enemies, and then kill them."

"We know," Xinui said. "Well, that was a lucky catch."

"Lucky, yes," Kane observed. "But the chances of finding a single infiltrator, especially one as skilled as a Callidus, by luck are insignificant. There are more."

"Lots more," Nakir noted with a smile. "This gathering might prove interesting after all."

Xinui frowned. "Are you sure the other Kerme - " by this point the Magos in question had left with a spurt of irritated binary - "is real? She asked Nakir for directions."

It was not Kane who answered, but the adept next to him, whose name Nakir did not know. "Since your Legion insists on refusing to reveal the deck plans of the _Red Tear_ to our brotherhood, yes, a number of us have needed to ask you for directions." Kane's face etched itself into a grimace in response. "Since you refuse to treat us as brothers-in-arms, and insist on believing us barely loyal allies, since your kind destroyed Mars itself - "

There was a pause, and then the adept stopped his rant and stepped away. Kane seemed irritated, but not truly aghast, though given his augmentations it was impossible to tell. "To answer your question, I imagine the polymorphine bled some of Kerme's personality into the assassin, and that both asked the question for the same reason. As to Magos Laeropol's commentary - I apologize, but the point is valid," he said, "that there is reason for bitterness from the Mechanicum's side. I hope your Warmaster is aware of it."

"Everyone seems to be bitter," Xinui observed. "The governors, the Navigators, the Astropaths - and that's out of the ones that sided with us!"

Nakir shrugged. "For any number of men, any two will always disagree on something. Especially in these cycles. What is it you say, Xinui? Surely some revelation waits in line, surely the Second Order waits in line?"

"That's Sanguinius, not me, and he was citing a lost poem. But yes, Nakir, something big _will_ come of this war. Maybe it'll be the Second Order."

"Maybe," Dar Nakir said, grinning at the fact that the Fabricator-General of the Mechanicum so obviously had no idea what they were talking about. "My point is, truth is found in conflict. We're lucky to have a diversity of opinions at this conclave. Good luck!"

And he was pushing, more carefully, through the crowd of tech-priests again, considering his words. Yes, this conclave-council-gathering-assembly-thing-parliament-meeting-congress-negotiation was no war, but it was surprisingly like one.

Perhaps he'd be useful yet.


	4. Chapter Two

The city was filled with dusk. The local star was not physically setting on Catachan; Horus Aximand knew well that the reason for nightfall was the planet's regular spin.

And yet here, in a spire at the heights of Karchak - the lone city of Catachan - the Fifth Captain of the Sons of Horus couldn't help but feel that weight of dusk. The Warmaster had been tired lately- he was built for rule, true, but managing the chaos of the Council of Catachan was difficult nonetheless. And the exhaustion had been passed on to Lupercal's sons. For Aximand, for Little Horus, this meant looking back.

His life had been spent in war, the great task of the Crusade. Many times Aximand had placed his life and more on the line for the Imperium. And now these days were gone, as gone as his violent and wonder-filled youth. A new epoch. Many times Aximand had looked at the Luna Wolves who'd retreated to Terra with some jealousy; they did not have to give up anything, not in their minds.

And yet they had lost everything, too, even more than Aximand. And above all else - "Brotherhood," Little Horus said.

"A good answer," Ezekyle Abaddon said.

Torgaddon was oddly silent, probably racking his brain for any jokes that would still apply. His last favorite punchline - well, Loken's punchline, but it had been Torgaddon's favorite - about Horus killing the Emperor seemed more like a wild dream than absurd sedition nowadays.

Not that Aximand regretted it all, not as strongly as Torgaddon or Loken. There was a new focus to them now. The Mournival had been consecrated in the blood of the past, and to contemplate the change only made it greater. They remained.

"A good answer," Torgaddon eventually said, "but a boring one. Couldn't you have said, I don't know, 'the idol of 63-12's Headless Oversoul in my chambers' or something?"

"Torgaddon, you know the edicts of the Imperial Truth," Abaddon noted with a frown.

"To forbid jokes about religion is the first rule of religious law," Loken observed. "When we cease to be capable of toying with the boundaries..."

"We bind ourselves to dogma and become as good as headless ourselves," Torgaddon completed when Loken did not.

"And yet jokes about our foes were much funnier when they weren't about our cousins, no?" Loken asked.

"Give it time," Aximand said. "Give it time. Also, the opening ceremony." For the reason the Mournival was gathered was to prepare for the formal opening of negotiations. A symbolic transition of sorts.

Abaddon nodded. "Forward!"

The Mournival, the elite body of advisors to Warmaster Horus Lupercal of the Sixteenth "Sons of Horus" Legion, moved out. They were Captains, and only rarely had fought together; yet they moved like a well-oiled Squad. Torgaddon's behavior was most visibly warlike, even checking side hallways for traps; Aximand and Abaddon simply walked, the latter with more determination, whereas Loken gave the illusion of almost running, despite moving at the same pace as his brothers.

The Mournival rounded a corner, and then there was the grand staircase. The readiness for war faded into the Astartes' bones, and the four Sons of Horus ascended into the Tip of Karchak as dignitaries, representatives of the Warmaster - albeit representatives in power armor, to be sure.

The hall itself was titanic in scale, a kilometer in diameter. At its center, Horus Lupercal stood, Sanguinius at his side. Other important figures were seated in irregular rings - Aximand could see Fabricator-General Kane, Navigatorial Envoy Wu Zatee, and other lords martial and civilian. Most of the seats were yet empty, however.

The Mournival marched to their spots and took them. Slowly, more visitors trickled in, filling the chairs; gradually, an annulus of people emerged, a ring filled with chatter.

"Well," a governor in the row behind Aximand commented, "if it isn't the great Ezekyle Abaddon! Listen, if you - "

"It isn't" Torgaddon interrupted. "Abaddon is to my right."

Rather than rising to the bait and asking Loken, who actually had the seat to Torgaddon's right, whatever request he had, the governor sunk into his chair.

Of course, a couple of minutes later, an Admiral passing by referred to Aximand as Abaddon. Suddenly, Aximand remembered why he'd felt so much distaste at the appointment of the Council of Terra. Still, the Sons of Horus were mostly left alone; Torgaddon discussed strategy with Loken, the real Abaddon entertained himself by informing a remembrancer Aximand didn't recognize of his most recent campaign (because no matter how annoying remembrancers were, the propaganda war had to be won), and Aximand read.

It was a rather fascinating revisionist account of the Unification Wars. Aximand had talked to veterans of those conflicts, and he was quite certain that the Thunder Warriors were far less promiscuous than described, as well as that the Emperor of Mankind did not, in fact, begin his descent into madness when the aforementioned proto-Astartes had to be destroyed. Still, the rest of the tale was plausible, and its theological underpinnings were intriguing.

How open the galaxy had once seemed! A wide canvas, built for adventure, not only war. A land whose most basic foundations were unknown. How the young Aximand had resisted the focus of the Crusade, how he had himself imagined revisionist histories like the one he now read, trying to analyze the Emperor's mind! How the Imperial Truth had seemed like a series of needless restrictions on the imagination! Not even the hypnosis of induction had entirely wiped away those ideals. Where had they gone, then?

A salute woke Aximand from his deep thought.

Fireworks exploded across the transparent spire. Sanguinius soared upwards, lighting torches on the rim of the Tip. The First Company of the Blood Angels, led by Captain Raldoron, paraded in a circle outside the ring of representatives. In the sky, the flotilla of the Legions came together, forming Catachan's inner moon into the Eye of Terra. Rolls of Horus's great victories unfurled around the walls, forming a vast strip of triumph.

Even Aximand could not help but join the crowd's roar, screaming his pride in his Legion and his father, screaming defiance to the mindless butchers of the Imperium, screaming the truth to the sky.

"People of the Imperial Truth!" Horus Lupercal exclaimed. "We are gathered here today to forge the foundation of our rebellion, to coordinate our path. I will be brief, for all of us know that the details of the future will not be decided tonight; but some things need to be said.

"We live in strange times. We live in an Imperium forsaken by its Emperor, a humanity betrayed by its exemplar. Yet we will fight on. No matter what comes out of this council, we will fight on. And we will win!"

Ezekyle Abaddon got out of his seat and headed towards the stand. Above, fireballs bloomed.

"Today, we gather to redefine the Imperial Truth. Not change it- renew it. The way is hard, but it is necessary - so let us begin!"

A cheer went up, though not as deafening as before. After a brief pause filled with mumbling, Lupercal gave the stand to Abaddon.

 _Interesting._

Ezekyle Abaddon gave off a toothy smile. "My father has spoken for us all, but let me say those things humility would not allow him to state. The Emperor of Mankind is mad, unfit to hold his throne - hate him for it! Humanity is at war, a primal war of justice against madness. Let us not forget the past, but put it behind us nevertheless, save for that part which we have yet to avenge. And let us not feel an iota of compassion towards those who felt none towards us! Who felt none towards Malcador, towards Kelbor-Hal, towards Jaghatai Khan! For the Warmaster, servants of mankind! And death to the False Emperor!"

This time, the roar was massive indeed, no doubt as planned. The Mechanicum representatives filled the air with static. Navigators, many Terrans, scions of destroyed planets - so many here had lost everything to the Emperor. And this time, there were words in the roar, probably due to the Mechanicum's coordination. Five words.

"DEATH TO THE FALSE EMPEROR!"

Perhaps Aximand's estimate of the difficulty within transition was excessive. The Emperor had, after all, alienated his people with amazing efficiency. Still….

"I don't like this," Loken said quietly, even as the crowd cheered.

Torgaddon nodded. "Abaddon is going too far. Positive emotions would bind them to Lupercal's cause far better than the promise of vengeance."

When Torgaddon was truly serious, it was clear something big was happening. When Torgaddon was serious, he was also too often wrong, possibly from lack of practice. "No," Aximand said. "After what Ferrus did to Mars, nothing will bind the Mechanicum to Horus' cause better than the promise of vengeance."

"Perhaps," Loken said, "but there's something wrong with this. I mean, Aximand, you have to agree this war is... sad, for want of a better term."

"It's sad, yes, but it's other things as well. The Legion has not changed at its core, after all. This is more than just a new crusade, but Abaddon's words are truer than yours. We have to move past our obsession with summer to pass through the winter."

"I thought," Torgaddon said, "that the melancholic humour - "

"The melancholic humour is one of contemplative change, but change nonetheless."

Loken nodded at that.

Abaddon strode down the alley, almost glowing. Aximand thought back to the question of his youth, of the eternal opposition of adventure and war. Perhaps the change in his position had come about simply because the Great Crusade was, in many ways, still an adventure, or had seemed like one. And now that war alone stood dominant, the philosophical questions of the past reemerged.

"Abaddon," Torgaddon said, "are you sure that was wise? I mean, you sounded rather fanatical there."

"There's nothing wrong with fanaticism," the First Captain said. "You just have to be fanatical for the right thing."

"Which is tricky," Torgaddon retorted, "given that the right thing constantly changes."

In front, Kane was giving a few words to conclude; fireworks were still transfiguring, and the massive torch-flames swirled with the circular breeze. Ezekyle Abaddon shrugged and sat down, even as the audience began to stand up.

"No, Abaddon," Aximand said, "there is good reason for fanaticism's bad reputation. It's closely linked to lack of thought. But you see, for the Mechanicum or the White Scars, agreeing with you is not fanaticism. It's simply common sense. And vengeance."

The hall was emptying; the actual work of negotiation would begin in the backrooms. Astartes were hardly necessary for all that; they were present to provide security. But besides a single Callidus assassin the Blood Angels had found weeks ago and an Imperial warship that had, by all accounts, blundered into the system without any expectation of finding Lupercal himself, there was no indication of threat.

The Mournival remained; but Aximand noted the passing of most of the other present Astartes. Most of the Renegade Legions had members present. After the Sons of Horus and the Blood Angels, there were the most White Scars; there were also Death Guard, Iron Warriors, Alpha Legion and Thousand Sons. A single representative was present from each of the Space Wolves and Ultramarines; there were no Raven Guard. The Horus-Guilliman argument had reached the point where there were, effectively, two separate rebellions against the Imperium.

"Lupercal!" Loken announced, and Aximand was sent flying out of yet another meditation. Warmaster Horus neared his body of advisors, squatting down in the alley for lack of a fitting chair.

"Interesting," Lupercal noted. "Is the Mournival of one mind on what Abaddon implied?"

"Not precisely," Loken said. "Though it seems the audience certainly was."

"Confident determination is good for riling a crowd, even when it's misplaced. But yes, I let Abaddon speak for a reason. I, myself, am not of one mind on this subject." Lupercal shrugged. "Rationally, it's hard to explain just what the difference is… but emotionally, there's a world of difference between crusade and civil war." Pause. "I'll talk to you later; right now, I must mingle. May you stay free!"

"May you stay free!" the Mournival said. The torches had been put out; the fireworks had ceased. The glory was over, after an unusually short reign, and the dirty work was about to begin.

And yet the Eye of Terra still stared down from the heavens, promising that- no matter what change came - the Mournival and the Legion would stand, unbroken.


	5. Chapter Three

The assassin spun in Azkaellon's raised right hand. The polymorphine in her blood was wearing off, and she had returned to her stable form - even if, perhaps, not her original one.

She had imitated a serf, the attendant to Kaole Eonataggio, one of Aphgori's Third Company. The Astarte in question had been busy in the training cages at the time of her capture, and so she had attempted to steal some codes from Eonataggio's chambers. Only Captain Aphgori's coincidentally walking in had uncovered the breach, and only her instinctual reaction had exposed her for an impostor.

It had been close; and what bothered Azkaellon most was that he still had no idea what, exactly, the Callidus had been trying to accomplish. Any of them - the Kerme incident could be explained away, but by now it was clear that the Imperium had deposited a lot of assassins into the ranks of the Council.

 _Trust no one._ Fortunately, Azkaellon only trusted Sanguinius anyways; and experiments had shown that imitating a Primarch was beyond the abilities of even the best chemicals known to mankind. Even kelboryl thiotimoline, which modified a body permanently and carried a high chance of fatality, was incapable of creating anything resembling Perturabo (who had been the experiments' mastermind).

Still, security had to be raised.

The assassin sniffled. Azkaellon looked down at her once more. "Well?" he asked. "What _is_ your name?"

"I am nameless."

"Your number, then."

"I am not at liberty to reveal it."

Azkaellon had tried everything short of torture; and it was clear even torture wouldn't work. Assassins were trained to resist anything the Blood Angels could provide. Perhaps the Emperor himself could have extracted something of worth. Perhaps Magnus could have - the Callidus' shields were too strong for the former Librarians to bypass, but maybe….

But Magnus was too far away, and there was only one thing to do. "Don't you want to find a way to keep your life?" Azkaellon, Commander of the Sanguinary Guard, asked the woman. It was a common enough maxim - only the living could find a way to turn a situation around.

"Nothing I could do would enable me to survive to tomorrow. Farewell."

And, as Azkaellon cracked her in half across his knee, she spit at his helmet.

"Failure," he voxed. "The assassin is dead."

He tossed the body into disposal. It rattled off, worthlessly swearing vengeance. Azkaellon had been unable to unravel the conspiracy thus far; but given that there was a conspiracy, it would be uncovered. And the Commander of the Sanguinary Guard would stop at nothing to ensure that happened soon.

"As expected, then. We're at training section number 146," Zuriel returned. "There's been an incident."

"Coming," Azkaellon returned, and began a jog through the halls of the _Red Tear_. It was a magnificent weapon, as well as more the Blood Angels' home than Baal was, these days. Baal was the ultimate origin for most of them, to be sure; but besides sentimental value, it was ultimately a base. Sanguinius spent relatively little time on it - Kaenz had called that a mistake, but Azkaellon was not going to question his father over something like that.

Baal could fall; it would be a great disaster - Prospero's lament - but it was not unthinkable. The _Red Tear_ held much less value for an enemy, and would be much harder to capture besides.

Azkaellon jogged through the flagship's halls, thinking about desperate contingency plans and the future of his Primarch. Nevertheless, he was fairly satisfied as he headed through the hallways, and when he blocked the passageway of Navigator Li Zatee he even apologized.

"No need," the heir to House Zatee said. "I'm not Navigating anyways, at the moment. You need the time more."

"I'm not fighting," Azkaellon said with a frown, "am I? My time is at the moment as worthless as yours."

Zatee shrugged and left, leading Azkaellon to reconsider whether the young Navigator was dangerous to the Legion and Primarch. It did not appear so, but House Zatee was significant. Perhaps this meeting, chance as it appeared, had been meant to allow a political ploy of some sort?

Azkaellon mused on these topics as he walked up to the shadowed training cage he had been called to; but all such thoughts vanished from his synapses very rapidly when he came up to the site. Sanguinius himself and Zuriel stood off to the side; but in the cage itself, two warriors lay, one with a clean shot from Zuriel's bolter through the head. The other looked dead at first glance, but on the second was revealed to still be breathing under his once-brother's mass. Kaole Eonataggio - coincidences fit together.

"The Flaw," Eonataggio said as he struggled upright, and Azkaellon thought of that Battle-Brother's past tenure in the Librarium - just how many secrets was a psyker able to glean? "Xageal fell to it fifteen years ago. I remember."

"As do I," Sanguinius said, and there was the deep distance of eternity in his voice. "Xageal, Adosius, Alotros…. And yet then it was rare, only erupting in the heat of battle."

"It was such until we arrived in the Catachan system," Azkaellon put in.

"An exponential rise since then," Sanguinius said. "Though not precisely exponential- there's an aspect of irregularity to it. It will become utterly random in three and a half - no, four and a third Terran days."

"And then what?" Azkaellon asked.

"Then we will need to find the problem's source," Sanguinius said. "This is a separate crisis, not merely part of the rising blood-tide we have faced since inception. We are dealing, quite possibly, with a specifically targeted attack."

Azkaellon saw the difficulty his Primarch - his father - had in talking about the fallen Blood Angel as if he was nothing than a number. He saw, though it did not appear that either Eonataggio or Zuriel did; and he wondered if he should say something, but there was nothing to say. It was too simple. His brother - An Ohgiocci - was gone, consumed by the Black Rage.

"The Black Rage" was not an official name, given that some preferred "Red Thirst" and most who knew simply used "The Flaw". In truth, it didn't matter how it was called. It was an error of creation, a tiny nick in the gene-seed of Sanguinius, that led to uncontrollable anger, the transformation into a beast, and - inevitably - death. It was sometimes called a curse, and that was as good a description as any in this time of reborn superstition.

Eonataggio dusted himself off, looking down at his fallen brother. "An infection?"

"Perhaps," Sanguinius said. "Though that isn't how the flaw has spread thus far. Something is coming; temporal shock waves rolling backwards..."

"Is the Warp not timeless?" Eonataggio inquired.

"Its interface with our world," Sanguinius answered, "is not timeless. But why time? I do not know, my sons. I do not know."

Eonataggio, unusually comfortable in the company of his Primarch and the high command of the Legion, nodded. "But we will."

"No matter what," Azkaellon reiterated.

The Blood Angels stood around the training cage in silence for several moments. Azkaellon felt the determination burning in his chest, the hope and need for salvation.

"But a less desperate matter," Sanguinius said at last. "Azkaellon, did you tell Admiral Damed Ilabum that his battlefleet was useless?"

Azkaellon was stunned.

"Along with," his father continued, "certain utterly misleading recommendations about strategy and an insinuation about his loyalty to the Warmaster?"

"Of course not," Azkaellon said. "I haven't ever talked to the man."

"Which proves," Sanguinius completed, now turning to Zuriel, "that your doubt in your superior was misplaced. Admiral Ilabum somehow mistook an infiltrator for the Commander of the Sanguinary Guard. Given past experiments with polymorphine and Astartes, it is an impressive error, but not an unprecedented one."

Azkaellon's mind clanked into a conclusion. The unprecedented mass infiltration, the imitation of Astartes, this debacle…. "They're trying to split us apart. To ruin the negotiations by sowing mistrust!"

"They don't have to sow mistrust," Sanguinius said. "That is already there. They merely have to confirm it, which is always easier."

Azkaellon glared at his brothers - his brothers? "Handshakes," he evenly said. Polymorphine could not imitate Astarte physique well, but it could make an attempt. But Astarte strength could not be achieved by anyone else - if it could have been, there would not have been a need for Astartes.

Eonataggio was the first; his strength was about Astarte-normal, perhaps slightly weaker than that but unquestionably more than a mortal human's. Zuriel was real, too. Still, Azkaellon couldn't resist the urge to glare into shadows, to search for signs of opposition.

There were none. The training cages here were empty; not even pests endured. And Azkaellon's gaze was inevitably drawn back to the fallen Blood Angel at the center of it all.

They stood - by now Eonataggio had come out of the cage, and now there were only four figures, still, a ring around the end of rage. Sanguinius seemed ready to fly upward, to depart this place and return to the negotiations, when the former Codicier stopped him.

"Father," Kaole Eonataggio of the Third Company said. "There is something else. I've been having - a number of the former Librarians have been having - dreams. Visions." The Primarch inclined his head in curiosity. "The details vary, but inevitably, there is a war, fought in forests or caverns or mountains. The skies above go berserk - the suns obey no feasible laws of physics, looping back upon themselves as if controlled by… other orders. And then, suddenly, everything freezes, and the vision ends. A sudden end - not the usual awakening from a dream that is common with visions, but a jarring discomfort."

"Does Nikaea not yet hold?" Azkaellon interjected. It did - the Warmaster was not denying that the Emperor had, once, been sane, and due to legalistic nitpicks Nikaea wound up hypothetically recognized by the renegades. In reality, of course, Legions like Magnus' ignored it, but the Blood Angels did not.

"I did not seek out these sights," Eonataggio said. "I would be mad to."

Sanguinius frowned. "I have not seen such matters; but then again, my foresight has always been more… distant. I will think on it. Farewell; I need to talk with the Warmaster."

And the Angel of Baal spiraled upward, leaving his sons in the darkness.


	6. Chapter Four

Raldoron, First Captain of the Blood Angels, glanced at his adjutant - Mkani Kano, once and (presumably) future Librarian.

"Are you certain?"

"I'm sure," Kano said. "A vessel is preparing to exit Warp into this system."

Raldoron nodded. Kano did not know, but it was exactly two and a half minutes before the time Sanguinius had predicted the Flaw would become unpredictable. Already the Blood Angels were gradually distancing themselves from negotiations, although it wasn't as if the entire Legion was going to be afflicted at once - the chances, Sanguinius had assured him, were still miniscule. Nevertheless, the prospect of the Legion's destruction depressed morale even if it was implausible.

Seconds ticked; Raldoron observed the clocks alter, and then the storm broke.

"The sensors are recording a ship entering the system."

"Not responding to vox-hails!"

"Class unknown - oh, oh Warmaster it's huge!"

Shipmistress Athene DuCade walked through the chaos, blurting out orders. The _Red Tear_ prepared for battle.

"Name of hostile vessel?" she asked an officer near the visual sensors.

" _Accumulated_ \- no, _Accursed_. _Accursed Eternity_. Written in High Gothic."

Raldoron grasped his powersword, preparing for the possibility of boarders - though that was distinctly remote, given the size of the flotilla gathered here. "Don't fire first," he ordered DuCade. "This ship is significant; if possible, we'll board."

"It looks… suspicious," Kano observed. Indeed, the vessel - there was a hologram of it hanging in the room's center- appeared pristine, but with an aura of something intangibly wrong. Tracing the geometry, Raldoron could make no sense of it; it was all physically possible, but eerily welded together.

"How does it feel?" the First Captain asked.

"Psychically? At a distance, it feels very wrong. I'd rather not test it up close."

"Possession risk?"

Kano shrugged. "Also a lot of other risks."

Raldoron nodded; there was good reason to avoid this place. And yet - "We have to board. Sanguinius' visions." After Kano gave a nod of acknowledgement, the First Captain put on his helmet and spoke into the vox. "First, 24th, 81st, 99th, 144th, 269th Companies - prepare boarding torpedoes. Target: the large unidentified vessel that just translated in-system, apparently named _Accursed Eternity_."

After that, it was fast. Most of six Blood Angel Companies - over two thousand Marines - was overkill; but overkill accomplished missions faster. Besides, it was always nice to have more forces than thought necessary for a situation - margin of error of that. And they weren't being utilized much in the Council anyway.

Raldoron clambered into a torpedo with Veteran Sergeant Vendrenze. It was a well-defined cylinder, with long benches on the sides. Cables traced the underside, and where the outside was painted red, the inside was mostly a pleasant beige.

"Brother-Captain," Vendrenze said, "I am honored to have you here, but - um - what, exactly, are we flying into?"

"As I said in my orders, I don't know. But it appears to be important."

"By the still-technically-forbidden psykers' testimony?"

"By our Primarch's testimony."

That, at least, calmed Vendrenze's worries. He merely stared through the hole at the torpedo's front at the gleaming spaceship ahead as the countdown to launch went forward.

The torpedo swung in its restraints, its engines on the verge of ignition; and Raldoron considered the slowly locking doors, the vastness of space ahead, the seated Squad. He knew each of their names and histories: Fikant the troublemaker, Yteros the sniper, Gastent the obliterator... but he didn't truly know any of them. The distance of command….

For a moment, Raldoron wondered if Sanguinius himself felt the same distance. Did the Primarch's perfect memory and other mental powers mean that he truly knew his children? Or was the sheer size of the Legion enough to separate the Angel from those not in the high command?

The countdown began. The moment ended.

"Two!" the metallic voice stated. "One! Launch!"

It began.

Air and fire roared around the torpedo, and then the _Red Tear_ was an adjacent ship, a building dominating the celestial sphere. Around it, stars glimmered, and below Catachan's surface, sickly-green, smiled. The torpedo spun as it flew, and stars and Tear and Catachan whirled around, presenting dizzying vistas to Raldoron's eye. A grand expanse presented itself; and in the distance, the pure white light of pure darkness. The _Accursed Eternity_ stared at the Blood Angels, daring them to face its scale.

The vastness outside was a board of regicide for some, and a god to worship for others. For Raldoron, trying to analyze the universe's meaning was pointless, no matter how tempting it could seem at moments like this.

"Captain," Vendrenze evenly said, "landing impending."

Raldoron squinted forwards through the slits; it didn't look like the _Eternity_ was that close. Then an unexplainable ache appeared in the back of his eyes, and he decided to trust the instruments.

And then the shock wave came, and any doubt remaining was washed away.

Raldoron braced for impact, even as Squad Vendrenze grabbed weapons and adjusted armor. Then the nose popped open, and he rushed off the ramp, half-expecting to wade into a sea of Warp xenos.

There were none. There was only a featureless white hallway. It was square in cross-section, visibly curving forwards to both of Raldoron's sides; above, square pipes traced its arc. To the right, the nose of another torpedo pierced the tainted ship's shell, Kano likewise transferring into the hallway.

"Eerie signature," the adjutant told Raldoron. "Just… wrong."

"Well," Vendrenze said with an audible grin, "we don't need to be psykers to see that."

Raldoron found it hard to disagree. There was no peeling paint here, no sign of pest infestation; just empty, bright whiteness. It was snow-like in how deeply it colored perception of this space.

"Right," Raldoron voxed. "First Company, meet at coordinates three hundred meters to my right."

At least his location sensors were functioning.

The First Captain walked through the curving corridor, trying to pinpoint any signs of life. There were some - footprints of non-Astarte shoes, for instance. Still….

"You sound satisfied," Vendrenze observed. "Was this predictable?"

"I had no idea what we would find here. The absence of hostiles, however, is a plus."

"Certainly. Even Nakir wouldn't want to fight Warp-spawn."

The Blood Angels trudged forward; slowly, the meeting point took shape. It was, as Raldoron's helm readings had predicted, a large hall, titanic in scale and bone-like in macrotexture. It was approximately elliptical, but balconies and cavities riddled the walls. To the touch, however, the walls were plasteel like any other. It was only when considering the entire chamber that the animalistic tendency became clear.

Raldoron saw Sergeants emerge, slowly filling the giant space. He separated from Vendrenze and walked to a wall, then clambered upwards. There were few handholds. Still, before long Raldoron was on the lowest balcony, a convenient vantage point to watch the Astartes of his company enter (and potentially to address them).

Red poured onto the floor of the white, covering it up. But the Blood Angels were not liquid, and so specks of white still glimmered under the Astartes' feet, reminding Raldoron of this place's utter emptiness.

Checking the wall behind him, Raldoron made sure that no one would emerge. There were no holes, only a small seat-like pit. It would be too dangerous to sit there, though; for all he knew, he could fall through the wall.

"Brothers," the First Captain stated as the last Blood Angels walked in. No one had been lost- here, at least, Materium geometry was not being violated that severely. Sensors showed that might be happening deeper into the ship, though. "We are all gathered here as the Warmaster's sword. We do not know what is happening in these white hallways; for all we know, it is a trap. But if the Emperor's forces thought to trap the Blood Angels, they will soon learn their mistake!" A cheer. "Be wary. Stay together. And let's do our best to figure out what's going on here!"

"A stirring speech," a voice came from above and across Raldoron, "but utterly unnecessary. We are your allies, Captain Raldoron."

A figure resolved itself in the shadows on the third balcony opposite Raldoron. He was an Astarte, without doubt, and armored; but he was covered by a thick mahogany-colored cloak. It waved in the absence of wind, billowing behind his feet. His face was light, with lordly features. He was tall, commanding, and clearly a psyker- he even had the hood. His weapons were concealed by the cloak, but everything Raldoron saw made it obvious he was armed.

"I am Mephiston," the Space Marine said, "Navigator of the Accursed Eternity. I come from the future to give a grave warning. The war you are fighting will tear the galaxy apart. You must stop the march on Terra!"

There was silence. Raldoron looked at the First Company thoughtfully. "Why?" he eventually asked Mephiston.

"It is this conflict," Mephiston said, every word filling the air with a dread resonance, "that is granting the Dark Emperor the power to ascend- though not even he knows it. He will open the floodgates. A plethora of petty gods that will slay and scheme and spread and smile and stand… the galaxy will have little chance. We will be the last of the pure, though by your standards we are quite corrupted indeed."

"So what should we do," Raldoron inquired, "if not fight?"

"Come with me, and I will show you," Mephiston answered.

It was a bold proposal, and a suspicious one. Raldoron had no doubt of Mephiston's capacity to control the ship, but his goodwill was in severe question. "Which Legion," he asked, "are you from, anyway?"

"I do not know. We are past the point where such distinctions are clear. Come- choose your brothers, and follow me."

There was really no choice. "Squad Vendrenze," Raldoron said. "Squad Enurican, Squad Dalverante, Squad Phitagginitt, Adjutant Kano - reach Mephiston."

For his part, Raldoron began to jog along the wall, jumping over small gaps in the balcony. Distance faded behind him, and he absentmindedly recorded the angles of the massive chamber as he rounded it. Or, rather, he recorded its curves and spikes- there were no right angles. Mephiston hadn't been lying when he mentioned "corruption" (presumably, by the Warp): Raldoron could hardly imagine such a mess being created intentionally. At most, it could have been a monument, but not a functional space.

He emerged at Mephiston's side as the four Assault Squads rocketed up to join him, as the members of the Company staying below received orders to hold position, or discreetly follow, or try to link up with the other boarders.

"Welcome," the Librarian said, though there was no welcome in his face. "Follow. And send for Sanguinius - in time, we will need to talk to him too."

Raldoron forwarded the request, with a healthy dose of associated warning, along with a suggestion that the other Companies leave, as after all there seemed to be no battle. Then the mysterious Librarian-Navigator passed into the depths of the vast vessel, and one by one, Squad Vendrenze followed him in. There was no other breath.

"I will take you to the Captain," Mephiston explained. "His name is Draigo. He will explain the occurrences better than I ever could."

Raldoron nodded. "So you say you came from the future?"

"From an era far past this one, yes, though that future will never come about now. We come from the Warp Storms of the 41st Millennium, from a time where Chaos reigns. Sanguinius was not enough."

"And you're here from the future to change the past."

"Yes. We have solutions, but only the Angel can reach them."

They walked on in silence for some time, and Raldoron observed the grand vistas visible from their catwalk. They were bestial, cetacean even, and yet inherently dead. No, not dead - timeless. They were beyond such petty realities as Raldoron's. They were of the Second Order.

Well, maybe they were of the Second Order. Probably not. But they made one contemplate it, that semilegendary domain that was to the Warp as the Warp was to everyday reality. It was a conjecture, most brilliantly suggested by E the Nameless, an ancient Baalite philosopher.

It was unknown outside Baal. In the heyday of the Imperial Truth, it was considered superstition, perhaps dream. Raldoron still considered it such. Still, it was poetic.

They walked, and Raldoron watched the baleen, and the ribcages, and the lungs. Grand towers of porcelain-like bone, in truth facades like any other. The galaxy seemed strange from a distance.

But here in its midst? Here, the world - for all its obvious weirdness- was comparatively normal.


	7. Chapter Five

The shuttle tumbled through space, carelessly diving towards the docking bay. The designers of this classless vessel had clearly lacked any appreciation of grace, Dar Nakir noted.

His Company had been sent back by the commanders of the vessel, which had turned out to have peaceful intentions after all, thereby showing their intrusion was meaningless. Somehow, though the ship had in every way signaled suspicion, Nakir wasn't surprised.

It would be called a fiasco by certain elements of the fleet. Still, overreaction was preferable to underreaction, in these months. At least it had occupied Nakir.

The Blood Angels Captain stood unmoving as the ship gave another tumble. It was not being fired upon; it was simply a horrible transport. That surprised Nakir more than the intruders' peaceful intentions. Anyone, after all, would have peaceful intentions when staring down five Companies of Space Marines.

Almost anyone. The stubbornness of xenos lacked a maximum, and some foes had power enough that five companies were nothing to them. "Well," he told his men, "we all know what a disaster looks like. This wasn't one. So let's get back to… 'work'."

"Brother-Captain," Sergeant Aezireze - the current pilot - observed, "the chronometers are malfunctioning. I will be unable to make a precise approach."

"Then make an imprecise one. We don't want to be stuck here. As it is, make do with what you have."

The shuttle gave a slight shudder before rapidly shooting off, and Nakir wondered if this craft was originally made by Orks. At least it didn't smell like it was. Nakir was a sufficiently good judge of smell to detect much - but, however much he tried, he couldn't tell the gene-lineage of the mysterious Astartes.

He did smell Warp-spawn, but Raldoron must have done so too. It was unclear what these Space Marines had done to gain the First Captain's trust; Nakir hoped it was a lot.

It was beside the point. Raldoron, Dar Nakir reminisced as the ship gave another shake, could take care of himself. Then the mass of the _Red Fury_ glided into view, and Nakir's thoughts were even more firmly focused on the here and now. Guns flew past, and the hull seemed close enough to touch. The shuttle wove between bulges, aiming for the docking bay; the erratic ride cast Nakir's mind back to riding a rad-wurm in his youth. It had zoomed through caving tunnels, head smashing through walls, wriggling its rider off. He had lasted longer than any other five-year-old (Terran years, of course, though they had used the Baalite equivalent) of his tribe; but his injuries were severe.

The ship was no wurm, of course, but it appeared similarly unstable. A wing knocked against the Blood Angel flagship, knocking it spinning into the void. Some loose wire screeched against a cannon before tearing. Ahead, the docking bay was opening, slowly-

But the shuttle was small, and decelerating. Shuddering a final time, it crawled through the hole, then slid into an empty slot on the vast deck. Already the doors were swinging open.

"Were the unknowns just trying to kill us with their shuttles instead of their bolters?" Daduri inquired.

"Possibly," Nakir said.

Daduri gave a forced chuckle. The possibility _was_ funny, but also worryingly plausible. In any case, they had escaped the grip of the _Accursed Eternity_. Nakir led the Blood Angels off the ship, and back into their home.

Captain Enzurior of the 95th greeted Nakir as the latter stepped off the shuttle.

"Brother," Enzurior said. "Where was the 24th? Where is the First?"

"Visiting the _Eternity_ ," Nakir said. "Didn't you get the notice?"

"For three weeks?"

Behind him, Nakir felt Daduri's jaw drop open.

"Time compression, I presume?" Aezireze suggested.

"Yes," Sergeant Andam said, "unless my sus-an membrane activated in there without my noticing. We were stuck in time."

"Humph," Enzurior said. "Given the unknown and rarely contemplated physics of the Warp, such a result is quite possible, but - suspicious."

"This entire mess is suspicious," Nakir agreed. "Too bad we can't do anything about it. Three Terran weeks to slightly over half a cycle - one to 36 ratio. Does this match known phenomena?"

"There are no known phenomena," Aezireze said. "It's the Warp. What sort of weirdness - "

That was when it hit.

Andam was grinning one moment, and the next his face was contorted in the fury of brotherloss. It was unearthly, Nakir considered as his Sergeant barreled towards the Captain. It was simply unbelievable. A weapon of the unknown Space Marines? Some secret hate that had eventually let itself out? It was hard to tell. Impossible, in those last few moments.

Nakir smiled, even as Aezireze took the shot. He did not miss. No matter how much was off with the universe, Aezireze's aim was incorruptible. Even as his torso barreled towards the inactive Nakir, Andam's brain exploded from a direct bolter shell hit.

It was not easy to kill a Space Marine. Even after the second headshot, there was something breathing within the former Sergeant; something tried desperately to hang on to existence. That thing slammed into Dar Nakir, slamming the Captain onto the floor, tearing at his incomplete armor with its gauntlets. It tried to get through Nakir's skin, into his blood.

It collapsed slowly. Bit by bit, its movements calmed, and Nakir's skin - of no new scars, his armor ensured that much - relaxed. The body of Tactical Sergeant Andam sank to the hangar floor, slowly quieting down.

It was only then that Nakir realized how loud, how painful, the transfigured Blood Angel's screams had been.

"It's over," Dar Nakir said as he kicked the dead weight off himself. "Now explain to me what 'it' was."

Most of the Blood Angels were still in the ship. Good. "This never happened," Nakir stated when no response came. "I will bring the corpse to High Command - Aezireze, Daduri, with me. Enzurior, direct the squads to debriefings."

Enzurior did, after profusely - though not as verbosely as usual, given the event had shaken him as well - thanking Nakir for the dubious honor. And it was only afterwards, as he carried a cooling Astarte body without a head through the hallways of the _Red Tear_ , that Dar Nakir recognized the gravity of what he'd done. Sergeant Andam, the idealist, the dreamer, the obliterator, was dead - killed by Aezireze's hand. And Nakir had played a role in it too.

When the Terran Blood Angels had departed to their home planet, Sanguinius had not fired on them - not that he could have ended them, but the possibility of damage was there. He had foreseen the matter, he had pronounced. And he had seen that offensive fratricide would not lead to victory. Some - Fifth Captain Amit most notable among them- had called that a waste of time. But Nakir had felt the deep impact, had felt the fine steel that divided them from the enemy. There was something to be said for deciding when to fire on one's own. It was a two-way war.

Guilliman did not understand. Guilliman would have fired; he probably had fired. Horus had fired, too, but out of rage and not calculation. But Sanguinius had announced that there was no benefit to attacking now, that the Terran Blood Angels would return in a more favorable situation.

Nakir's actions had been purely defensive, of course, but he couldn't help feeling regret at the fragility of the world. The Blood Angels had been different, purer at that instant; but that had passed with stellar wind. Time had flipped the dilemma.

And in all probability, time had flipped it because of those who had abused time- the crew of the _Accursed Eternity_. Nakir felt the fury within him, an uncoiled spring, and wondered if he would himself succumb to the same weakness in time. It was disturbingly plausible. Indeed, even his excursion towards Command could have been part of the plan.

But his intent was pure, and so was his action. He would not retreat. Nakir smiled, grimly, despite the occasion. He was a Blood Angel, still, and he would fight the corruption until the end.

The funeral procession zigzagged up the ship, until the audience rooms were in sight, until High Warden Dahka Berus himself blocked the ascendants' path.

"Captain Nakir," he said, calmly as ever. "Who is this?"

"The body of Sergeant Andam of the 24th. He was affected by an unknown, erm, contagion - went berserk…."

"Ah." Berus snapped out of his confusion immediately, and his aspect became one of phlegmatic judgment. "You have told no one of this?"

"Some of my battle-brothers, and Captain Enzurior, saw it. But I have instructed them to keep it secret."

"Good," Berus said, "good. Though it may not stay secret much longer. So tell me, Captain Nakir. What do you know of our gene-seed's distinctions from that of other Legions?"

"I'm not an Apothecary. I know the basics - mild similarity of features to the primarch, mild sympathetic personality traits enhanced, though most of that is due to conditioning, and high acceptance rate for Baalites."

Berus nodded, and signaled Nakir and his sergeants inward. "There's something else. Not taint, but a… Flaw. It was rare in the past, but for unknown reasons has spiked since the _Accursed Eternity_ arrived in-system. Thirty-three brothers have fallen to it in those three weeks." Berus glanced down as Nakir squeezed the body into the door. "Thirty-four."

"So it will eventually kill all of us?" Daduri inquired.

"No, no. It's too rare for that."

"And that Flaw," concluded Nakir, "induces an artificial rage, crafts uncontrollability, reduces a son of Sanguinius to no more than… a beast, a berserker. It is death."

"A good metaphor."

"It was not a metaphor."

Berus strongly blinked a few times, then shrugged. "The body will be burned according to protocol. Extract progenoids and so on."

"Are they safe?!"

"No. Research."

Nakir listened, but found it hard to continue. For the Legion to have such a gene-seed wound, without him ever being aware…. It was a massive blow to everything he had thought he knew. It spoke to the Primarch's ability, of course. But also to his secrecy.

"How many know?" Aezireze inquired.

"More and more," Berus stated. "It's out of control. Initially it was kept secret, while the infection occurred only in battle. To prevent suspicion from the Emperor. Now that this is no longer an issue, Sanguinius plans to tell the gathering the truth. It will breed mistrust; a questionable move, certainly. But what the Primarch commands…."

"And Horus knows?"

"The Warmaster knows," Berus repeated. "But truly, I tire of sharing this darkness. Are we not here to provide the foundation of a greater Imperium? We will all die, one way or another. There are greater subjects."

A typical response for Berus. The High Warden had little patience for idle talk and less for curiosity. His focus was unerringly on the greater good of the Legion, which he tended to treat as a single entity. What was beside the point was false.

Those qualities made him annoying. They also made him an excellent High Warden.

Nakir left the office soon after, having given Andam to Aezireze. He meandered through the halls of the _Red Tear_ aimlessly, scaring a couple visiting sub-admirals. There was no one to kill, no one to fight; there was, in sum, nothing useful to do. And more importantly, there was nothing he wanted to do in this moment. His faith in Sanguinius had been shaken.

No, not faith. Faith was for the Imperials and Macipizians. He was an arrow in the Warmaster's quiver, nothing more. He was simply tired. Lost.

It was Enzurior who shook him out of his stupor.

"Brother," the 95th Captain said as he approached the 24th outside the latter's quarters. "I have been enlightened as to the natures of Andam's ailment. I see they have shaken you, as well."

"Yes."

Enzurior sighed. "The Primarch is relentlessly questing for a solution. We are not threatened, not in bulk."

"The strength of the Legion remains intact," Nakir concurred, now walking side-by-side with Enzurior. "But its soul…."

"Our soul is the same as ever. We have always been such, wondrous yet flawed. In every Legion. The Fifteenth bears the possibility of excessive sorcery. The Seventh is devoted to the pursuit of pain. The Sixth is barbaric, beastly. And all of us are inhuman in our defense of humanity. All of us are warriors. Our own flaw is not the Rage alone; but the Rage is at least a physical twist in the helix, one we can seek to combat. Perhaps it was the Emperor himself who placed it there, whether intentionally or by fatal accident. Perhaps it stems from the same source as Sanguinius' wings. I will not besmirch the honor of the fallen by excessive philosophy. But this is who we are, Nakir."

"It is not! We are not Angron's hounds, or even Russ' wolves. This is an error, not an intrinsic element of us."

"Apologies," Enzurior said. "Perhaps I said it wrongly, but…. I merely meant to say that it is better to know, in this case, than to keep a secret to be exploited by our myriad enemies."

"That is true," Nakir said. "That… that I cannot debate."

The Blood Angels walked through the flagship, meditating on the pure shadow within true light; and the _Accursed Eternity_ hung in distant viewports, forgotten.

It shouldn't have been.


	8. Interlude: Warmaster

"And what of Kane?" Ezekyle Abaddon inquired.

Horus Lupecal, Warmaster of the Coalition (that was the newest version of his title), sighed. It would have been so much easier to take Ez and the others along, to have multiple pairs of eyes immediately; but protocol made that difficult.

"Kane," Horus said, "is still a good friend. Agreed to tone down the worship of the Omnissiah - no, Ezekyle, we aren't getting rid of it entirely."

"So it _isn't_ just veneration of the Emperor in another form?"

"The Emperor was worshipped - before the Battle of Mars - as an avatar of the Omnissiah, not as the supreme deity. He's been exiled from the canon now."

"Are you sure," Torgaddon asked, "that they aren't just making all this up as they go along?"

Horus shrugged. "According to Kane, they pretty much are. It's a… flexible religion."

"Still," Loken said, "it seems insensitive for them to have a religion in these times."

"In these times," Aximand retorted, "tradition is among our greatest strengths. Our ranks are as numerous as they are because of those who did not desire the destructive change of the false Emperor. It's sad, really; we should be more capable of starting over. But we can't. That isn't how the galaxy functions."

Horus nodded. "I do think I must allow an exception for Kane. Though, if you feel strongly on this subject…."

"I don't," Torgaddon said. "I like Kane's approach to religion much more than the Emperor's."

"I only worry about the effect on the Imperial Army," Loken suggested, "when the Titans supporting them are chanting prayers while moving into battle."

"As it is, they've stopped that," Horus replied.

Loken shrugged. "Well, that settles it. A secret religion that they only half-believe in? At this rate, the Cult will go away without us ever intervening."

Abaddon gritted his teeth, but agreed. "This will come back to bite us. But, I will admit, that doesn't matter if we lose the war."

Horus nodded. "Very well. I trust that if the need for action were severe, you would say so." He didn't know to what extent Loken was merely hiding his true feelings, even now; but the young Tenth Captain was improving. Abaddon and Torgaddon were never ones to mask the truth. The Mournival was wavering; and given Horus' personal friendship with Kane, something none among the advisory body shared, this course was acceptable.

"May you stay free!" Horus exclaimed to his sons - a new old greeting, that. It had been used in the pre-Imperial era on Cthonia, and had been resurrected by the iterators. It did have a fashion of worming its way into everyday speech.

The Mournival saluted, in staggered fashion - Horus suspected the effect was intentional.

He walked to one of his sanctums slowly, considering the myriad facets of the galactic military situation (that took his mind off the myriad facets of the diplomatic situation). Three Legions made up the Imperium Secundus; seven, Horus' rebellion; eight, the forces of the Emperor. The Imperial Army was roughly equally split between the three. The nobility of Terra still favored the Emperor, for the obvious reason of his having the ability to squash them without difficulty; those that escaped, Navigators and Astropaths alike, tended to go to Guilliman. The Mechanicum was Horus's - the Emperor had taken Mars, and Guilliman desired, ultimately, its replacement with a secular order.

That was the large scale; but there were eddies on eddies within the current. Some Magi agreed with Guilliman that the Mechanicum was stagnating. The heads of the most powerful Navigatorial House of the Imperium - House Zatee - had sided with Horus. In the Imperial Army, the distribution, though even, was hardly neat.

And on top of it all, any strategy had to deal with the fact that communication across the galaxy was becoming effectively impossible.

Horus reached his office, and from under a desk took out a barely worn volume. It was an audis, a recording of blue whalesong - the last such recording in existence, of which all the others were copies. Terran blue whales had been driven extinct by a variety of pressures millennia ago, and no surviving colonies on other worlds were known. Once, Horus had said that he would go on the Crusade to find the whales.

That had been long ago, in a more naïve age; but as Lupercal listened to the low sounds for the first time in a century, his mind calmed, in a peculiar melancholy way, nevertheless. He felt on the verge of understanding it; perhaps there was a hidden message, perhaps even an intentional one. That was in the past, though.

For the hours of whalesong, Horus Lupercal - though never sleeping - was distant, despite never losing awareness of the whirling galaxy and screaming demigods that surrounded him.

But it was a song of ending, and as such, it ended.


	9. Chapter Six

Another audience. Another speech. Azkaellon wasn't sure if his gene-father could get exhausted from public proclamations, but the bodyguard had become so just listening to them.

But this was different. This time, the darkest secret of the Blood Angels was about to be aired to the galaxy, and the Legion's soul bared to the blade of hatred. Both the Black Rage and the Callidus invasions could be construed as lies, inventions to clear the Astartes of blame for their missteps. But Azkaellon knew, like few others on the _Red Tear_ , that these speeches were not lies.

And now, again, Sanguinius was speaking black truth to the teeming crowd.

He was brief. Perhaps too much so. A biological defect in the IX Legion's gene-seed... he tried to speak impersonally, but could not, and that made the truth of his shine better than any forced emotion could. But precisely because that matter was too painful to speak long of, the deserved reassurances were missing.

"Thus," the Primarch of the Blood Angels concluded, "I thank you for your time, and bid you good fortune in future fate-swirls. Glory to the Warmaster!"

And Sanguinius was walking off, and the filled hall shook in confusion, even in shock, with the recognition. Azkaellon could guess what they were going through; he had gone through it himself, long ago. A tectonic shift in trust.

"They will think," the Commander of the Sanguinary Guard told his Primarch, "that you are dangerous."

"Not precisely," Sanguinius replied. "But they will think worse of me. Sanguinius did not tell us the full truth, they will recognize. The Blood Angels hold a caged monster. Horus alone is perfect. And that is better for them to think - better, by far, than that Horus is replaceable."

"He is not," Azkaellon accepted, "but neither are you. And you have a better claim to perfection than Horus."

"Perfection," Sanguinius said, "is not what matters. Horus is more human. The most human of us all, always."

"Horus was defined by being raised by the Emperor, was he not?"

"Not primarily." And then there was the Grand Expanse above the _Tear_ 's core, and the Primarch of the Blood Angels soared again. "But there are other worlds. What of the _Accursed Eternity_?"

"You know better than me. My investigations have been limited to the Callidus assassins." Azkaellon glanced around. "Incidentally, you should keep cautious of them. They do, after all, carry the title for a reason."

"They are not after me," Sanguinius said. "My visions have made it clear they have another primary target."

"Who?"

"Who knows? But the possibilities are quite narrow."

Azkaellon nodded. Kane, Sanguinius, and the Warmaster himself were the only feasible targets for such a large assault - though nothing said there had to be only one target. "Couldn't it be all of you?" Azkaellon asked.

"I would know if my life was in danger," Sanguinius said. "Although this is not certainty."

"Though that is doubtful," Azkaellon concluded. "But as I said, of the _Eternity_ I know nothing, save that you should not accept your invitation to go there."

"I will accept it," Sanguinius said. "My mind is made up. And you will stay here, to lead the hunt for the Callidus in my absence. The intersection is too important."

"At least I suppose you'll be safe from the Callidus," Azkaellon joked, even as footsteps echoed through a perpendicular corridor leading into the Expanse. A second later, Aalitton of the Sanguinary Guard emerged. His armor was slightly blood-marked, and his face joylessly excited.

"Lord Primarch," he said, "Commander Azkaellon. Another Callidus has been found. This one… this one killed Admiral Krawell."

Admiral Krawell. Azkaellon needed several moments to match the name with a human. An experienced commander of the Imperial Army's Navy, Krawell was seen as an inspiring leader. She had started her career in the Unification Wars, and many said that she desired to return to the Emperor's side; but Lupercal had trusted her, and it was her troops that provided the primary security forces for the Council of Catachan (outside the Astartes).

The Commander of the Sanguinary Guard slowly shook Aalitton's hand, feeling every microfracture, every bulge. It was a normal golden gauntlet, but here it shone with the history of the IX Legion.

It was not enough.

"Now Nryor the Goldtouched will inherit the ships," Azkaellon concluded. "Krawell… she was loyal after all."

"It is peaking," Sanguinius said. "A war is starting, in forests and caverns and mountains. The skies… the skies are going berserk, an accursed eternity watching our defiance. It will all end suddenly."

"What?" Aalitton asked.

"You remember, Azkaellon, don't you?"

Azkaellon did, and said so. "Nevertheless," he continued, "you did not see that vision. Something is odd about all this."

"Everything," Sanguinius said, "is odd about all this. But Horus has sent for me, Azkaellon; take Aalitton and meet Nryor. We will continue our discussion later."

The departure was swift after that. Aalitton didn't even get a chance to bid farewell to his gene-father before Sanguinius ascended, wings beating in rhythm with ship's hum. The Sanguinary Guard strode off, through crimson halls and hallways, through hospitals and forges. They did not speak. Azkaellon was not one for idle chatter, and Aalitton was even more silent.

They walked into the shuttle, and then Catachan glimmered outside once again, and the sun was glowing, and the peace of the constellations reigned; but not for long enough. Within scant minutes, the Blood Angels were on the _Blue Shadow of Arcatase_ \- Nryor's flagship, currently navigated by Wu Zatee.

It was, in fact, a blue shadow - well, a blue blob, at least. The paint scheme was atrociously contrasting; Azkaellon couldn't imagine that not being on purpose. The shape was odd, too.

At least the geometry was of realspace.

Aalitton and Azkaellon strode through the hallway, the taller Aalitton having to slightly bend to a roof not designed for Astartes. The bridge door shrank from them in the distance, but it could not help but be tugged towards them, even as the ship's engines ignited a rumble in the distance.

Then they were in. Nryor the Goldtouched, a round man with a well-decorated uniform and a bottle of Cthonian wine, nodded to the entering Blood Angels.

"I assume," he said, "that you're here to officially tell me Kespee is dead."

"Indeed," Azkaellon said. "You're Admiral now."

"So I have heard," Nryor said, putting down the bottle - Azkaellon saw it was barely touched. Nryor was not as heavy a drinker as rumor would suggest, he knew; the Goldtouched tended to present the image to be more relatable, but in reality his demeanor concealed a sharp, determined mind. Unlike Krawell, he was well-liked, although also not free of treasonous rumors.

People - including much of the security force - gradually trickled onto the bridge. "They're expecting me to give a speech," Nryor said. "Can you imagine? So annoying."

"Hardly an unreasonable desire, though," Azkaellon observed. "Aalitton, go talk to Navigator Wu Zatee."

"I'll send an honor guard with him," Nryor said. "Might as well, after all."

"That will hardly - "

"He can go berserk at any moment," Nryor said, eyes suddenly freezing. "I don't want to lose my Navigator, especially when my navigator is one such as Lady Zatee."

That was… valid. To be sure, the opportunity of the Flaw striking was astronomically small, but the Commander of the Sanguinary Guard knew he would do the same in the Admiral's place.

More than two hundred men of the Imperial Army came with Aalitton; the standard estimate for killing a Space Marine was a hundred, though a Sanguinary Guard was more than a normal Astarte. Either way, Azkaellon couldn't help but feel some suspicion that, were Aalitton to lose himself, he would be the only one that could kill the Guard.

And, incidentally, vice versa.

Men and women of the Army continued to sluice into the bridge; Azkaellon considered talking to Nryor further, but there was little to say. And then the Admiral was on the podium, and Azkaellon first of the crowd, and the first speech of a new age for this fleet was beginning.

"People of the Imperium!" Nryor said. "We live in an age of shocks. The rebellion was plenty for a time; but now the starquake penetrates into our lesser lives. The Astartes are entrenching their dominance over us all. Warmaster Horus Lupercal has turned from the Emperor of Mankind, and the Legions begin their plots to kill us all! They make excuses - the Blood Angels can't control themselves, they say, assassins lurk among us, they say. Who do they take us for?!" To Nryor's credit, the traitor - or merely loyal? - general continued speaking even as the first shots were fired. "We know the truth. Krawell trusted them until the end, and she was killed for it. For the Emperor, then! And for humanity!"

Azkaellon had fired the first shot at Nryor, and the second into the crowd, even as his other hand slammed on his helmet. There was barely a sign of melee; clearly most of the Imperial Army either agreed with their Admiral or was afraid to defy him.

"Kill Zatee," the Commander whispered into his vox to Aalitton through the gunfire. That was the most important thing of all. If the _Blue Shadow_ escaped, with the rest of the fleet….

Azkaellon's armor buckled under the massed fire, even as his jumppack vaulted him roofward. Killing Zatee was the important thing. He was too outnumbered here to fight until the end, and Nryor was well-protected. The thunder of lasguns and bolt pistols continued, even as Azkaellon punched upwards, through the ceiling-

Into another chamber, of course. It would have been too much to hope this strike took him, and the entire bridge, directly into space. Weaponry pattered below, and Azkaellon sprinted through the hallways, sniping every one of the few people he saw. From his helmet readouts, the Navigator's sanctum was close. The vox, regrettably, was limited to short distances, blocked by Nryor's allies.

Lesser wills, Azkaellon reflected, would be shocked or frustrated that the betrayals were still not over. He was hardly happy about it, either. But the treachery never ended, he knew, not really. The best humanity could do was to transcend them.

The dash continued; the sanctum was two hundred - one hundred - straight left. Azkaellon kicked open the door, using his pack to decelerate. It swung open, fluorescent yellow turning to the whole rainbow.

The first thing his genehanced eye spotted was Aalitton's form. It sprawled on the curved floor, dead to all appearances - but, Azkaellon could tell, actually in deep sus-an sleep. Then there was Navigator Zatee.

She was dead. Very dead, curled in her golden seat hanging in the geometric center of the room, arms frantically thrust towards her holster. Azkaellon breathed a sigh of relief at the recognition that Aalitton had, predictably, succeeded in his mission.

The third thing Azkaellon noticed was the group of surviving humans. There were about ten of them, the rest having drifted off one way or another.

"For the Warmaster," Azkaellon announced, "yield."

Their sergeant fired the first shot.

The Commander of the Sanguinary Guard slammed into the gathering, body-crushing the impactee instantly. He turned around, punching another guard against the wall, even as a couple of others lost their nerve and fled.

Grabbing his power-blade, Azkaellon swung left with fist and right with sword, neatly decapitating the sergeant. Four men - well, two men and two women - remained. All young, all desperate-faced.

"Until the end, then," one of those women said, raising her face to look Azkaellon in the eye. "And in death itself - "

"Just yield," Azkaellon commanded. "Give me my brother and run. I tire of killing humans."

That was a bit of an exaggeration. Still, he would hardly lose anything by letting them go - he couldn't exactly take on the entire ship by himself, now that Aalitton was incapacitated. Fear to be spread, shock to be lost - a fair trade, for a tad of mercy.

They took his offer, of course. First the back two, and then even the praying woman rushed off. Two lasguns clattered to the floor.

Clipping them to his belt with his left hand - he had the room - Azkaellon swung Aalitton over his shoulder with his right. Then he ran again, charging across the width of the _Blue Shadow of Arcatase_. Golden banners surrounded his flight, oddly providing some camouflage. A pair of security officers gave him a wide berth. Another crewman, apparently feeling suicidal, fired. It mattered little. Right now, Azkaellon was divine; it was an illusion, he knew, but a convenient one.

He headed into the ship's belly. He could hardly get to the shuttles, especially given that a large portion of the crew would be defending the primary exit. But it didn't look like the bridge was too successful at tracking his blazing route, and so he shot towards the escape pods. There was no time to look around, now, except for the most basic tactical appraisal. Metal dust fluttered up from the floor. Doors were punched shut. Others were cut through.

Azkaellon ran. It was an unfortunate thing to be doing, as glorious as it seemed in the moment; but he believed in doing what one must. The good of the Legion required his and Aalitton's survival, and their untrackability could only last for so long.

His vox opened, the blockage that Nryor had imposed cracked at last.

"Brother-Commander?" Zuriel's voice asked.

"I'm busy. How are matters?"

"As expected. We are firing on Admiral Nryor's fleet; they are vastly outnumbered, having expected far more support, and so their ambush wasn't enough. Just survive, Brother-Commander."

"Same to you," Azkaellon said, and cut off the conversation.

He emerged onto a balcony above the escape pods. A few workers were milling about, but a single shot into the air was enough to send them screaming off. Azkaellon flipped his jumppack open, the glided off the edge, into the shadows.

He sprung upwards even as he landed, Aalitton precariously balanced on his shoulder. The Commander ran forth, tossing his brother into the pod before falling in himself. He initialized the launch sequence, then locked the door and considered the possibilities.

Above, the first guns were fired, even as the _Blue Shadow_ fell away and Azkaellon again shot through the heavens. Taking a deep breath, the Space Marine secured his brother, from eye-corner watching Catachan unfold. Perhaps he should have run to the shuttles - Nryor's response was worse than usually tolerated in the Imperial Army.

Or perhaps there was a sizeable rebellion on the ship, one he had abandoned to escape - a chilling thought.

It was past, now, either way. Green Catachan lit up below, and the pod dove in. Azkaellon took a last look around the room to check for deficiencies-

And found one.

Not good.

"You've been listening in on me all this time," Azkaellon voxed, "haven't you?"

"Of course," Zuriel responded. "Incidentally, no Blood Angel ships joined, but a few Sons of Horus - that is, Luna Wolves, I suppose - joined them too. Led by Targost."

"Serghar Targost of the Seventh?"

"That one."

"Well, let him rot, then. Listen - the landing mechanism on my escape pod is jammed. I'll be jumping, and even if I survive, my armor might be wrecked."

"On Catachan? That would be bad."

"But survivable. Either way, if I should go offline, remember this: truth is ever forged in the crucible of doubt. For the Warmaster! And for Sanguinius!"

And smashing the pod walls open, Azkaellon jumped.

They were in the low atmosphere by that point; yet the fall was still significant. He toppled through, the pod crashing to a fiery doom in the distance. Aalitton dangled in his arms, even as his eyes moved to select the jump pack, on a low power setting. And then Azkaellon veered, and the fog was coming up, and the heavens spun overhead; and somewhere there, the _Red Tear_ hung, looking at the falling angel.

The pack worked, even as it wound down its last reserves of energy. Azkaellon crashed through titanic branches, but there was armor for that. With amusement, he noted that a particularly tough branch had scratched his vox; it seemed his prediction to Zuriel had been correct.

And then, kneeling, Azkaellon, Commander of the Sanguinary Guard, landed in the unmapped forests of Catachan.


	10. Chapter Seven

"How many of the traitor ships are down?" Berus inquired, striding onto the bridge.

Dar Nakir looked at the High Warden and smiled. The whole mess was quite satisfying - something to do, at least. And an easy victory, in the primary engagement, which was also encouraging.

"All of them," he answered, "or at least all that we know are traitors. They seemed to have expected twice their number. Xinui thinks their Imperial contacts, namely the assassins, duped them on that. But a limited number of ships have launched numerous escape pods, and those are harder to stop."

Berus nodded, giving no sign of concern. "Well, most of them will perish on Catachan."

Aphgori of the Third nodded, not turning away from his station - a remote control of two sniper cannons on the _Tear_ 's underbelly. "The place is a deathtrap. It seems an incredibly ill-considered move. But as I was telling Nakir, they're desperate. I believe they'd make such an error."

"It isn't an error," Nakir answered, frustration building inside his throat.

"It annoys me to see my brothers argue so uselessly," Berus said. "Whether they planned for this or not does not affect our strategy. The three Captains here, plus Ziors Oramantr of the 254th, will coordinate the attacks on... those four landing sites; use other Companies as necessary. That site is the Luna Wolves'; the Sons of Horus will lead that attack, as well as five more. I will continue the hunt for the Callidus. Sanguinius is needed on the _Accursed Eternity_."

"We're getting stretched," An Ziatton of the 299th - the third Captain on the bridge - observed.

"Almost half the Legion is here," Aphgori contradicted. "High Leadership, perhaps, is somewhat stretched, but it always is."

"Not physically stretched," Nakir said, "but… unfocused, I suppose. Too many objectives, and unlike the Crusade we can't each focus on a single part."

"I do not believe," Berus stated, as if he was the Primarch himself, "that the Legion's division poses a problem - not yet. But yes, the Council is chaotic. In any case, good work; keep organizing the fire until the pods are gone, then plan descent. I must talk to Sanguinius."

And the High Warden was gone yet again.

"He's more… frantic now," Aphgori said. "Nicer, too. Is he also being affected by the disorder?"

"No," Nakir said, "merely busier. And effective second-in-command of the Legion; that takes time on time."

Then he turned back to the controls and continued to coordinate the guns. In truth, there wasn't much left to accomplish. The pods were crashing into the atmosphere, into a range where space weaponry was ineffective; at most, one or two more could be downed.

He got one in the next minute, and then the guns of the _Red Tear_ fell silent. Below, tiny crimson dots completed their blooms. Catachan hung on the screen. Around, the human crew rushed around, desperately trying to keep the ship above 100% strength.

"Done," Nakir said, tilting off.

"Same," Aphgori said.

For a couple of minutes, they considered each other while finishing their tasks. Nakir knew Aphgori was an excellent commander and fighter, but the Third Captain had a tendency to annoy him. He knew, too, that Aphgori held a rather odd opinion of himself - a view that Nakir was an unstable genius who lived in imaginary worlds.

If Aphgori had ever stated that directly, Nakir would've replied that no realm was purely imaginary while the Warp existed, that he was not that unstable, that frankly his tactical and swordfighting skills were not unusually high for a Blood Angel Captain. But their disagreement never escalated that far. The Blood Angels were a civilized Legion, after all (Amit excepted).

"Finished," Ziatton said, and the bridge broke into activity once more, as did the Captains. Nakir's Company was scattered through the _Red Tear_ and other ships; many of them were responsible for actually firing the guns Nakir was coordinating, where their superior reaction time gave them an advantage over normal men.

"Well done," Aphgori declared, even as Nakir began the task of voxing his Company together. "For Sanguinius and the Warmaster, brothers."

Ziatton responded in kind. Nakir did too, though somewhat more absentmindedly. Then he was running, sending Squad after Squad the coordinates where the landing took place, converging the leylines of war. He slowed to a fast walk on the path into the armory, joining the serfs in fastening full armor onto himself.

With the retinal displays, the work of gathering went much faster. The Company – all four hundred and seven functional Space Marines that were at Catachan – gathered in the official hall, waiting for Nakir's personal orders. Aezireze was there; so was Daduri. Andam was, of course, gone.

Nakir forced a smile nonetheless. Even one such as Andam did not deserve endless mourning. And he was getting his own wish at last - Catachan was orange with the first sparks of war.

"Brothers," he declared. "The humans and Marines under Admiral Nryor and Luna Wolves Captain Serghar Targost have betrayed their oaths to the Warmaster. Oaths are dust to all of us, of course; but it's not for making this war even less elegant that we must obliterate them. It is not even for the fact that they dishonor our brothers' memory through their anti-Astarte propaganda. It is for their allegiance to the forces of Destruction, or Imperium, or Chaos - however you choose to call it. It is because this ultimate conflict has only two sides, two options; and they have taken the other option. I do not need to remind you why that necessitates their destruction.

"We will strike at their landing site, deep in the titanic forests of Catachan; you have the coordinates. Speed is essential, and the mission is clear; so I will not detain you longer. For Sanguinius!"

"For Sanguinius!" the Company echoed, and then there was more organization. Drop-pods were filled and fitted, armor was checked and dusted, plans zipped through the vox-network. Nakir felt distanced, somewhat, from the dire realizations of recent days; war called. It would be a generalization to say he enjoyed it, but he _was_ an Astarte.

"For Sanguinius!" And then the 24th Company of the Ninth "Blood Angels" Legion stacked into drop-pods, and launch protocols were initiated, and Dar Nakir felt other times sing. Other landings throughout the Great Crusade, up to Ullanor.

Too short, too abruptly cut off was Horus Lupercal's reign as Warmaster of the Imperium. Its very beginning had sown the seeds of resentment - envy of Horus among the Primarchs, hatred of the Primarchs among ordinary men. Yet it also gave a second ideal to the Imperium, one Chaos' corrupting force could not as easily crush. That was the true Imperium Secundus; the new meaning of the two-headed aquila. Horus had replaced Mars, even as Mars hadn't gone anywhere. Had the Emperor foreseen, even then, his corruption? Had he worked to ensure a failsafe?

Then, launch; the pod veered off the surface of the _Red Tear_ , and Dar Nakir was in the present once again.

His neighbors in the pod were the Blood Angels of Squad Rinaspon. Sergeant Nassir Rinaspon was slightly cowed by his Captain's presence; Rinaspon was newly promoted, and though his combat abilities were undoubted, he was apparently surprised at Nakir's choice.

"So," Nakir asked, to cut the crust, "what do _you_ think of all this, Nassir? Frankly?"

"Frankly, I think it's a mess," Rinaspon answered. "The Warmaster should have been able to manage it."

"The 'it' is humans," Nakir said. "They're rather difficult to manage, harder than, say, Orks."

"Really?" one of the Marines, battle-brother Sinte, asked.

"Really," Nakir said. "I mean, you've fought them, haven't you? All you need to do is to scream really loudly and point, and they'll charge, or build, or do whatever. Mind you, it might be a bit harder to make it clear what you want them to do…."

"They do fight among themselves quite often," Rinaspon observed.

Nakir, smiling, nodded. "That's because they have a simplistic social order, and therefore can only resolve disagreements by battle. We, however, have developed diplomacy, which - although it can sometimes make us wish for simpler days, and occasionally creates this sort of mess - allows us to fight less often. Really unfortunate, in some ways."

"Secrets caused this," Rinaspon contradicted. "It was much simpler when it was just diplomacy."

"Of course, because-"

"Countdown!"

Dar Nakir gripped his blade tighter as the surface of Catachan grew more detailed on the screens. The pod would be landing in the midst of the enemy base, to the east side of the center. Around, a hail of fire descended, and to his shock Nakir even saw two drop pods scrape each other, almost ruining both. What were the adepts thinking?

"Three!"

The green below was only slightly interrupted, by temporary shelters, some actually within the tree branches, others in a large meadow. Finding such a clear space by accident would be a significant miracle in itself; but it wasn't that excellent of a defensive position, anyhow.

"Two!"

Gunfire spiraled upward into the crimson pods, but it was too weak to accomplish much. Nakir had tried to imagine a successful defense for the humans several times, but he still couldn't understand how they meant to win, unless they co-opted the environment of Catachan in an unknown way. Nevertheless, he suspected _something_ within that plan.

"O - Impact!"

The machine had overestimated the distance again. Fortunately, it corrected itself quickly, and the drop-pod doors flopped open. Nakir was second out, analyzing the situation. Above, tree branches rained on the Astartes' helmets where the pod had forged its trail. There was a large, semi-camouflaged shelter directly ahead.

"Baal!" Nakir shouted, and Squad Rinaspon charged into battle.

There was gunfire from the branches and the sides; but it was erratic, and quickly grew desperate. The Marines took out these snipers, one by one, and even supercharged lasguns did too little against Astarte armor.

Nakir shot off a couple of orders to the scattered Company, even as the enemy fire died down. Sergeant Rinaspon walked up to the shelter, swinging it open-

Only for it, and every shelter around it, to explode in a ball of fire.

Rinaspon was thrown backwards; Nakir cursed his short-sightedness at not realizing the visible-from-orbit site was a trap. Though he _had_ seen large life-signs within….

Two things happened, at that moment, to confirm Nakir's mental point. Firstly, a hail of charred corpses flopped to the ground. Secondly, a fiery ring, multicolored symbols within it, drifted from the inferno in place of smoke.

Around, a forest fire was beginning. Nakir had no idea how a forest-and-swamp planet could survive such a cataclysm. But more troubling was the Warp rift - for that was, without a doubt, the circle's nature - dawning over the flames. A large, blood-red monstrosity was emerging from it, even as smaller xenos fluttered around it and reality struggled to seal the breach….

Nakir tore his eyes off the visage. Stumbling backwards, he grabbed Rinaspon and ran away from the fire.

"Command," he voxed to the _Red Tear_ , "the shelters are traps. They're sacrificing the humans to summon daemons."

Above, the hateful glow of the Warp Rift finally faded. Nakir dared to raise his head and observe what was happening; he immediately wondered why he'd bothered. The creature that had come out was a thing of raw hate, paradoxical curls in serpentine segments. It was enormous, orange, and one-eyed (although it was difficult to define where that eye was).

"Regroup at my position," Nakir ordered as his hearts began to calm, as flames drew ever-closer. "Power armor can probably withstand this; and we can take out the abomination."

Vox-traffic continued, though impeded by the fire. "Local wildlife affected," Acral, almost under the rift, voxed. "Am executing an undulating toad."

"Don't!" Aezireze screamed, in the instant before Nakir would have. "Life-Eater!"

But it was too late.

Nakir stood in the distance, watching the poisonous cloud gradually boom from Acral's position. It was distant for now, and perhaps the Captain would personally survive; but his Company would be decimated. Rune after rune blinked out instantaneously. The daemons paused in their charge and disintegrated, the toxins of the Catachan Barking Toad being enough to destroy even warp-flesh. The orange snake screamed its last rage, but too was ripped to shreds, and then less. The fire died.

It was over within minutes. A crater in the canopy stood in the midst of the forest, Nakir on its edge (power armor had saved his life, at low toxin concentrations). Of the 24th Company, perhaps half was still alive. The havoc had, however, the Warp-xeno assault as well. There was only a circle of death.

In the end, Catachan had defeated them both.


	11. Chapter Eight

The titanic gunship thundered, descending through the atmosphere of Catachan. Horus Aximand and Tarik Torgaddon stood in the deck's center, readying themselves for fratricidal war.

Horus Lupercal himself was raging at the controls. If it had been an ordinary Marine in that mental state piloting, Aximand would have feared for his life; but Lupercal was, of course, steering the former spaceship in a perfect arc. And Handalok was there, too, ready to take over when Horus dropped with his sons.

All that hardly calmed Aximand down. It had even less of an effect on Torgaddon.

"For light's sake," Torgaddon said, "just how many separate betrayals will we witness in this war?"

"Enough," Aximand said, "to make us doubt everything and everyone - at least, that's the idea. And don't forget that refugees from the Emperor's Legions are arriving every day, too. When the unity of the Imperium, the unity of the Legions, is broken down, everyone tilts towards acting for themselves. We'll see double agents, too…."

Tarik nodded, absentminded. "Aye, octuple agents."

"The lodges will be dismantled," Aximand ascertained, "won't they?"

"Possibly," Torgaddon said.

It did make sense. There was plenty of distaste for the warrior-lodges, as there always was for a secret organization. And Targost had been quite intimately involved in every aspect of the lodges' function.

"You did not speak against it?" Aximand wondered nevertheless. "If the Mournival comes together…."

"I did not speak against it," Torgaddon said, even as the gunship thundered into position, "because I proposed it."

And with that, they cast themselves into the fire.

Shells hurtled from below, evaded with the maximum of skill but inevitably still occasionally precise. The bottom of the classless vessel broke off a particularly outstanding tree branch.

"Death to the False Emperor!" Horus Aximand screamed as the hatches opened.

Then he was through, closely followed by the Sons of Horus Fifth Company. They flowed onto the forest, bolters ablaze. Aximand crashed through a couple smaller branches before finding himself on a particularly enormous horizontal trunk.

Below, the Luna Wolves' base - easier, always easier, to think of the enemy as other, even when that enemy was a brother - stretched under Aximand's gaze. It was hardly even describable as such, given the short time Targost had had to construct it, yet it was impeccably fortified. Both on hills and below the water level, small turrets - some manned, some not - littered the landscape. Many had been reconfigured from drop-pods, in clear evidence of planning. No Marines were exposed; what Aximand and his men were shooting (even now) were the guns.

And the guns were shooting back. A Squad from Torgaddon's Company had - after somehow landing on land - been dismantled during an assault on a converted drop-pod. Some of Aximand's own Sons of Horus had been trapped in the mire and eliminated.

Slowly, the Fifth Captain walked along the branch, testing how close it was to breaking. Shells whizzed by; they did not impact, because the trees were excellent at obstructing the view, and a single shell would not kill an Astarte, but it was too close anyhow. He shouted orders through the vox, trying to bring the Company into a single spearhead. They were in no danger of losing, for their numbers were overwhelming, but it was going to be a long fight, and an all too bloody one.

Then Lupercal dropped.

Warmaster Horus of the Coalition, a demigod in sea-green armor. He was distant, too far away for Aximand to see his father's facial features, though he was well aware they were identical to his own. He meteorically descended into the trees even as the gunship veered above, ready to provide aerial support.

"To me!" Horus screamed (he needed no vox here), and the Second and Fifth Companies followed his lead. They were not happy about the necessary fratricide; but they were honored to have been chosen nonetheless. How could one not be, some would ask, when the Warmaster himself commanded it?

One could, of course, not be. Aximand had not been, and it disgusted him that anyone would be happy about this mission. Share Lupercal's fury, yes; but gratitude? And yet he scrambled through the breaking branches to Lupercal's not-actually-that-distant position, distinctly aware of the disadvantages of power armor in arboreal warfare.

Horus - close now, even as Aximand could feel the sideways momentum of the shells grazing his armor - stood on the submerged surface. They were shooting at him, too, but in this volume that didn't matter for one such as him.

He stood; he watched as his sons took position around him, directing their movements through the branches.

"Down there," he pronounced, "is Targost's bunker."

"He buried himself under a swamp?" Torgaddon exclaimed as he ran up to the Primarch.

"Apparently," Lupercal said humorlessly.

Then he charged. Or, more accurately, he and the accompanying twenty Justaerin dove into the muck, helmet for once closing on his face. In most facets, the near-invulnerability of the Primarch, combined with his reaction time, meant inspiration mattered more than protection.

Aximand leapt off the branch, diving straight into the stagnant water. He was not needed from a tactical perspective; but he had to be there when his brother-captain died. Torgaddon was under already, and several Sons of Horus Squads followed suit, though Aximand ordered most of his Astartes to remain.

The waves rushed up, and then the world outside Horus Aximand's suit was transformed. The sensors had a hard time with the opaque swamp, but outlines could still be seen. To his right was a shore; to the left, a tree rose from the pit's depths. And to his front, and slightly down - Aximand having assumed a horizontal position - there was the entrance to a tunnel, with a Legionnaire's legs disappearing into it.

He dove into it, only to realize the tunnel was in fact a natural lacustrine cavern. A ridiculously long eel registered to his back, snaking past the Son of Horus into the space. Aximand squeezed past, even as the eel turned towards him and - attacked.

The delay was not a welcome one.

Horus Aximand felt the fish's body coil around him, wondering what the fastest way to get rid of it was, even as he swam on. Then the power armor's joints creaked, and he suddenly recognized he could be in real danger here.

And then the eel uncoiled, just as suddenly as it had embraced him, and shot down. Turning his sensors in that direction, he recognized a scattering of spheres - the beast's eggs, in all probability.

Aximand shot past, the piscine glaring at him with tiny eyes.

The cave curved, and then branched; the upper line was empty, and so Aximand dove further, ignoring the warnings from his armor. He was safe for another hour, and he would only stay underwater for minutes. Pitch-black gobs of rock filtered, the light fading entirely, and then, after a ring of broken metal, the floor and ceiling became flat, and the cross-section rectangular. Quickly light reappeared, now filtering downward from the rock-carved shelter.

"How did he carve all of this in such a timespan?" Little Horus asked, by vox, as he climbed ashore.

No response came, of course, save gunfire in the distance; but as he ran through the corridor, Aximand suspected he knew the dark answer. The fortress was not days old, but months.

And if Targost's decision was not based on the Council's events, where did it start? Had he ever believed in the rebellion? Had he ever been a brother at all? And if so, how had he managed to conceal his change so well from his lodge-mates?

These concepts had been in Aximand's mind before, but they took on a dread certainty now. Nevertheless, he rushed through the Lupercal-shaped holes in walls, noting the smells and sounds around - why was there so much rot? - and keeping himself on edge for shooting.

There were only a couple of token turrets, though, and they were dead. The captain ran side-by-side with Sergeant Gavriel Entimalus now, having caught up to his battle-brother on the ground; and it was together that they emerged into the massacre chamber.

Corpses; human corpses, laid out in elaborate and mesmerizingly disturbing patterns (even disturbed, as they were, by the Primarch's passing), their blood used to paint now-defaced sigils on the walls. For a moment Aximand gazed at the ritual murder. Even Entimalus was speechless, not a common trait of his.

"Targost did this," he eventually said.

"Targost and his men, aye," Aximand noted grimly. Sons of Horus - whatever their Legion designation, gene-spawn of Lupercal. He had not been surprised when the Twelfth or Seventeenth did such things; had been moved when the Seventh reached such lows; but fellow warriors of the Sixteenth….

And Targost, too, not a faceless unknown that had somehow sneaked past the hypno-conditioning. The pain of comprehension washed over Horus Aximand yet again, a new wave of contemplation.

Yet after the pause, he ran on, a couple more hallways being passed before reaching the battlefield. Torgaddon was there to greet him.

"Serghar Targost and bodyguards met Horus Lupercal and bodyguards here," he commented. "Not much of a battle."

It was hard for him too; Aximand could feel it, even though his brother-captain's eyes were hidden by his helm. For once, the Fifth Captain was relieved he missed a fight.

The scene was fairly simple, broken Astarte bodies scattered around a white rectangular room. Huge cogitators dominated the walls: cheap control systems. (Now, Aximand noted that there were two Techmarines among the fallen.) Horus Lupercal, head nearly scraping the ceiling, stared at Serghar Targost. The latter was pressed against the back cogitators, frantically mumbling something about wanting the best for the Legion. The Justaerin surrounded him, though they parted for Aximand as he took his place beside Torgaddon.

"Enough!" Lupercal roared. "I do not care what your dreams were. Tell me one thing before I end you, though. How long ago did you betray me?"

"I never betrayed you," Targost said, looking down. "I always hoped to bring you to the Gods' side."

Horus responded by beheading the Seventh Captain.

A swift stroke; an execution, in full. Though Lupercal was still in the grasp of battle-fury. Aximand, for his part, was not; but there was nothing to say here.

For a time they stood in silence, even as more sons of Horus entered the room. The body of Serghar Targost slumped to the ground, Lupercal keeping his gaze on it as though expecting it to come alive at any moment. Not an impossible thought, actually, given some past trends in this war. There had been some ritual plan here, though thankfully it seemed to have been defused.

Then, finally, the Primarch turned around. He was melancholic himself, now that the choler had faded; but still Horus, still no more broken than before. This had been as hard as when the Terran contingent had fled, though then no senior officers had betrayed their Primarch.

"Emergency comm from Abaddon," he commented at last. "Not sure how it got through to here. I'll make it public, what with half the Mournival present."

"The battle's over, I presume?" Ezekyle Abaddon's voice came in, though covered in noise.

"Yes," Lupercal said, "at least down here."

"A delegation of xenos - Eldar - have arrived." The First Captain paused. "They're demanding to know why they have been excluded from this council." The hawkish disdain in his voice was blatant.

Horus' reply was softer. "Tell them that they were excluded because this is a council to determine the running of the Imperium of Man, but that they're welcome to observe. Sanguinius can negotiate." He paused. "I'm more worried about the landings. What, four sites are overrun by Warp creatures?"

"Three; the fourth is demolished, but no daemons. And all the sites had some Luna Wolf presence. Presumably Callidus, too."

Horus signaled understanding, waving Torgaddon and Aximand forward as he received reports from elsewhere. The landing sites had seemingly been meant to interlink with each other in some system of ruin, but that had been prevented, and so the discussion turned to more distant topics. "The warrior-lodges," Horus said. "I know what Loken thinks about them; but I still intend to keep them around."

"Don't," Torgaddon said, and despite the previous warning Aximand was shocked. The Second Captain had been among the lodges' most fearsome champions. "Other Legions make do without them. And didn't Targost say they were meant to prepare the Sixteenth for a turn to Chaos?"

"We can't trust Targost," Aximand noted, even though he found it hard to disagree with his brother's words.

"He was my brother," Torgaddon said. "And he was not lying then."

"Aye," Abaddon said. "Though it pains me to admit defeat, to accept we cannot change the lodges to our ends… I had a former Librarian examine the Lodge medallions. Some were full of Warp-damage. We cannot rescue the lodges, Aximand."

"I suppose we cannot," Little Horus admitted.

"We must move forward," Torgaddon opined. "Fraternity in shadows… it was a curious idea, but one whose time is past."

Then, the Mournival in agreement, the world returned to full color, with Horus examining Targost's head and Aximand's battle-brothers on the room's periphery.

"I will accept it," Lupercal said. "Others will carry out the task, but I suppose you are correct - the lodges are too corrupted. It was a beautiful idea, though. A beautiful idea."


	12. Chapter Nine

Raldoron, First Captain of the Blood Angels, sat and looked down on the _Accursed Eternity_.

He was in a bubble, hanging from the ceiling of a towering hall. Far below, the various engines of the ship stretched. Black to white, red to green, they boiled with madness. It was difficult to tell their details, not because of the distance - that problem Astarte vision could surmount without difficulty - but because of the Warp-induced clouds that hung around them.

Raldoron sat in one of the round chairs within the command bubble; the other was occupied by Draigo. The shipmaster of the _Accursed Eternity_ was a Space Marine as much as Raldoron himself, clad in blindingly silver armor. It undulated from within, waves of mercury sweeping across its surface. He was helmeted, and occasionally sketches of faces that were certainly not Draigo's own crept along his metal visage.

"So," Raldoron inquired, "what do you mean by being partly corrupted?"

"We are all bound to the Warp in one way or another," the captain answered. "All of us use some of Chaos' tools in order to fight it. We are all psykers, for instance. Every single human being of the 41st millennium - our version of that millennium, at least - is a psyker."

"That hardly seems _that_ dangerous."

"We use Chaos-tainted artifacts. We capture and use Warp entities. We… we have decided to go to any means to win an unwinnable conflict. That, in the end, has brought us here."

Raldoron nodded. He found it easy to believe Draigo, but hard to trust him. There were such truth-spinners, even among the Legiones Astartes, manipulators of facts and men. The Word Bearers seemed to have a particularly high proportion of them.

"Suppose I believe you," the Blood Angel nevertheless said. "Suppose the Coalition stops its offensives because they are unleashing the energy for the Emperor's victory. Then what do we do?"

"Sanguinius is the key," Draigo responded. "Sanguinius, and the Omnirift."

"Omnirift?"

"The Warp anomaly that powers our ship, that has transported us here. Come - let me show you it."

Draigo led Raldoron forward as the eggshell-door of the chamber swung open. Raldoron signaled the four Squads, behind him, to follow.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Kano said as Raldoron fell back into the mass of his brothers.

"I don't see any signs of purity here," Vendrenze observed as the procession passed under a tusk of a bridge. "Why are we still talking?" The implied corollary was that they should be shooting - a feeling, Raldoron knew, that wasn't limited to the malcontent Veteran Sergeant.

Sergeant Enurican shrugged. "They want peace, and have committed no acts of aggression."

"Moreover," Raldoron added, "we must learn all we can about them. They have caused problems, problems that may not go away with only their destruction."

He received blank stares at that; the foremost difficulty of the _Accursed Eternity_ \- that it randomized the Flaw - was, for obvious reasons, not known to the Legion at large.

Ahead, there was commotion. Raldoron watched something like a scorpion-tailed crimson tiger leap out of a wall, half-metallic and whirring at a high pitch. Draigo lifted his blade and charged, screaming words that were pain to hear. Silver slammed into cinnabar-red, and then, before the Blood Angels could join the fray themselves, the beast was gone.

"Bloodcores," Draigo said by way of explanation, seemingly unaffected by the melee. "Daemons of the Chaos God Arkhalash."

"There are no gods," Phitagginitt retorted.

"Call them what you wish," Draigo replied. "They're monstrous either way, and dangerous too. Come!"

They walked on, frustration rising within their souls. Raldoron knew that, but did nothing, for these ivory curves, glistening in the silver light, hardly inspired confidence in him either. The left wall, he observed, was in places shimmering with a thin film of liquid.

They passed staircases, towers, daemon-bodies and human bodies, weapons, torches, and an ever-more-bewildering array of machinery. Raldoron noted the deviance from standard geometry; it was high, but reasonably constant. Draigo did, in fact, have the situation under control. And then, at the end of a long and shrinking tunnel, as fluorescent light beamed into their eyes, Draigo was joined by a figure in blue and red armor.

"Angelos," he said, "our chief engineer."

"Is your entire crew Astartes?" Vendrenze asked.

"Yes," Angelos said, as fully armored as Draigo. "No baseline humans can withstand the energies here."

He sounded tired, or rather uncertain; perhaps even broken. His left arm, Vendrenze observed, was bionic, or at least made to seem such. A tattered cloak hung from his shoulders.

"The Omnirift," he told Draigo, "is for the eyes of Sanguinius and Sanguinius alone."

"Surely they can see it from a distance?" Draigo inquired.

Angelos nodded, though his discontent was evident. "Follow me," he said.

They came to the Omnirift through another large room, this one filled with a black smoke. "It is," Angelos assured them, "totally harmless."

"For short exposures, it should be," Kano confirmed when Raldoron looked at him in question.

At the room's center a chalk-white staircase, paint constantly running down its handrails, led the Blood Angels up to the engine room floor. They stood, surrounded by a zoo of machines. Many of those seemed porcelain, others metal; a few had fleshy elements, and - as Dalverante immediately remarked - none of them looked like they should work.

Angelos pointed into the distance, and Raldoron saw the Omnirift. It was… he tried to make up words to describe it upon his return, but his eyes could only see there was something, not what it was.

"It's not corrupt," Kano said, astonished. "It's not built off Warp entities, at least not on the first level."

"It is," Angelos replied, "of the Second Order." Raldoron was stunned into silence as Angelos continued his explanation. "The idea beyond the Warp. It is the only thing on this ship free of the Warp's taint. The rest… the rest is mild, for our millennium, but the Omnirift is transcendent. The one percent of it I am responsible for is by far my finest creation."

The engineer stopped talking, letting the magnificence sink in; but then Kano was tugging on Raldoron's arm.

"The Omnirift may be harmless," he shot out, "but the rest of this isn't. We should go back."

"You should," Angelos agreed.

They trotted down through the smoke-filled chambers before emerging into the waiting room. Draigo looked up, silver flowing across his helmet.

"Sanguinius is here," he said. "Come!"

Angelos nodded without satisfaction and walked back towards the engineering decks, presumably to continue his work. Raldoron led the Blood Angels after Draigo once more, through the inconceivable spaceship, until they met the Angel on a bridge.

The bridge in question lacked handrails; it was simply a spur of bone imitate that spanned a large gap, growing narrower in all three senses at the center. Draigo was walking forwards; then, suddenly, Mephiston led the Angel and three Sanguiniary Guards, at a jog, onto the span.

"Let me talk to my sons first, alone," Sanguinius said, and then the Primarch was flying over the gap, landing to the other side of Raldoron.

The First Captain, of course, followed his father into the nearest room. It was empty, like so much of the massive ship.

"I have heard their claims," Sanguinius stated. "About the war, about the future, about the Second Order itself. Can they be trusted?"

Raldoron looked at his Sergeants to answer.

"No," Vendrenze said. "They are another trick of the Imperium."

"No," Enurican agreed. "But you know that already."

Dalverante nodded. "Of course they can't be trusted - no one can. They shouldn't be believed, either. But perhaps it would be worthwhile to at least listen to them."

"Well," Phitagginitt added, "they are trustworthy in that they are driven by ideals. But ideals have turned ugly in this war more than in most, and… and I suspect they are more dangerous than our worst expectations."

Raldoron nodded. "They cannot be trusted. But I tend to believe they do not lie. And it's too late to turn back now."

"Kano?" the Primarch inquired.

"This ship twists time and space," the psyker said. "If you do plan to venture into its heart again, please do it quickly. We might be on the edge of being lost, though I do not believe we have crossed the horizon yet. But they might be right about the Second Order."

Draigo strode in at that pronouncement, and Raldoron wondered if the captain had eavesdropped on their words. It would be easy, as a psyker on one's own ship. "So?" Draigo asked Sanguinius.

"I will go," the Angel replied without a hint of lightness. "I will try to undo the choices that led to your nightmare. I do not know how; but you do know exactly what you want me to do, don't you?"

"I do," Draigo admitted.

"Then let us begin," Sanguinius said. "Though your words sound false in many ways, I fear their truth too much to simply neglect them. Raldoron - come with me. As to the rest, I will report on what I have seen after. And incidentally, were you aware you've been gone for weeks?"

"What?!" Enurican exclaimed.

"Time," Kano said. "Time spins in this whirlpool, and we can only curse eternity."


	13. Chapter Ten

Azkaellon pulled the spike out of his power armor's chestplate. It had, surprisingly, penetrated enough of the ceramite to become stuck, although nowhere near enough to actually damage the Space Marine. Another good reason to keep his armor on, even in its burdening depowered state - if the spikes had touched his skin, he was fairly certain he'd be dead within minutes.

Truly, he had no idea how the human natives survived.

He had only a vague idea of how he would survive himself if this state of matters continued. The lack of communications or a distress beacon had left him stranded (he couldn't even return to his landing site, as the escape pod had been completely destroyed), and eating on Catachan was a serious problem. At least there were a few species from other worlds, adapted to Catachan, that were almost certainly edible - pum trees, argews, and grox. For now, that was enough, and Azkaellon could steer clear of the more suspicious native wildlife; but his superhuman metabolism and carrying Aalitton used up a lot of energy, and he couldn't rely on three species forever.

So he trudged towards Karchak, which was (when judged from orbit) reasonably close. His armor was covered in grime and mostly inactive, save for a few basic suspension systems that did not require substantial energy; but his boltgun and glaive were quite functional, and if battle began, there was enough charge left in his armor to briefly reactivate it fully. Aalitton's armor was also depleted - given that his brother was in sus-an coma, Azkaellon had redirected that power to his own armor.

In the distance, he saw a hazy mountain, whose angles suggested it to be the city of Karchak. Even his enhanced vision could not, however, pierce the fog and trees enough to tell for sure. To his sides, the jungle stretched. Trees seemed to reach into the stratosphere as bare multicolored trunks, but there was still some light that penetrated the canopy, descending into a highly active understory. Half the plants moved; some were chomping each other. The result was a writhing, viridian lifescape that Azkaellon squashed pieces of with every step.

He walked on, Aalitton fastened to his back; and only a soft rustling behind and to his left caused Azkaellon to turn around.

The predator was a massive spider, covered in brown fur. Its head contained six eyes and two eyeholes, equally spaced in a circle on the face; in the middle of that face, a maw with about a hundred jagged teeth of various sizes loomed. It was as tall as Azkaellon in his armor, but – given that it wasn't walking upright – significantly larger overall.

The Sanguiniary Guard struck first, grabbing his boltgun off his belt and firing at one of the creature's good eyes in one fluid motion. The spider swung away, but the shell merely hit its mouth instead, exploding in a ball of flaming teeth. Azkaellon dove behind a bush to avoid the blast; that bush licked its leaves.

A few seconds later, one of that bush's tongues struck out towards Azkaellon, who responded by getting back up, stumbling backwards. The tongue dejectedly retracted itself. Above, the spider was retreating; Azkaellon was unable to see what was left of its mouth, but from the erratic wailing it seemed the answer was "little". It was a great relief, and a lucky shot; he would have won a fight, but that would've taken too much energy. Checking his surroundings again, Azkaellon saw nothing he knew as a major threat, so he reoriented himself and continued his trudge towards the mountain.

It was several minutes later that he saw the cavern entrance, ahead and far to his left. It was covered in vines, and a couple of trees blocked the entrance; so he walked on, not particularly desiring a meeting with whatever animals made their lairs within, until he noticed- off the corner of his eye- a glint of metallic reflection from the interior.

That, by contrast, was significant. He turned his route, occasionally glancing over his shoulder, as he pushed between tree trunks and bushes to reach the cave. It was large - as tall as a large building - and, although the entrance was rocky and round, these deposits were clearly biological encrustations. Inside, Azkaellon clearly saw, the passage became square and metallic.

He proceeded cautiously, climbing into the stony entrance from a ledge. The interior looked like some sort of bunker, albeit one millennia past utility. Azkaellon stepped past the rocky pinnacles, eventually coming fully onto the metal -

Only for it to suddenly, and blatantly intentionally, drop away. He had been standing on a trap tile in the metallic floor. Azkaellon grunted as he grabbed the edge of an adjacent tile, activating his power armor; the result was that he pushed too hard, being thrown into the far interior of the bunker, screeching as his armor scrubbed against the floor. Above, a laser beam was visible, only faintly discernible due to the dusty air.

The Sanguiniary Guard came to a stop, face down, next to a very slightly indented panel on the wall that, most likely, would spell his doom if touched. So he pushed to flip himself over, ensured - switching multiple retinal displays - that there was no danger in standing up here, and stood up.

The floor held. Azkaellon walked forward with care, using infrared displays to mark out odd panels to avoid. Not far ahead, the hallway ended with what appeared to be a wall made of obsidian bricks; to the left and right, a severely sloped corridor extended. There was a slight glow – not magmatic, conveniently enough – on the right side, where the path led down.

He emerged onto the sloped floor, having to jump over a step; and immediately he felt the apparently empty air part before him like a membrane. That was troubling.

He checked ahead and behind, right and – left. To the left, on the path leading upwards, the erratic rumble of rockets was audible, although the missiles were distant yet and muffled besides. He could try and exit the membrane, but then he'd have to re-enter through it; so, before he even completed the train of thought, Azkaellon switched his power armor to maximum and charged downhill.

He ran, gaining speed, even as the rockets grew ever-louder behind him, avoiding two more plates despite the rush. The chamber below was large; the hallway emerged far above its floor level, but that level was still visible from Azkaellon's vantage point. It seemed as inert as the rest of the deathtrap; it was probably just as dangerous. (In retrospect, exploring might have been a fatal mistake. But he would not stop halfway.)

With the din of the rockets coming ever-closer, Azkaellon came to the edge of the lightless cliff, and jumped.

The missiles flew on, exploding harmlessly on the back wall even as Azkaellon raised his glaive to deflect them if they turned out to be heat-seeking.

He looked around. This room was, in fact, a room and not a hallway; it was a titanic hangar, stretching at least a kilometer in length and width. In the distance parallelepiped containers stood, holding – as best as Azkaellon could determine – long-decayed food. Skeletons peppered the floor in places, presumably the remains of beasts that had entered the cavern. And far off, to Azkaellon's front, a massive source of radiation powered the fortress.

That was what it was, he knew – a fortress, placed by truly ancient Catachanians. He was probably the first human to set foot in the complex in millennia. It was a priceless archaeological find, or would be if there was any archaeology on Catachan; and Azkaellon made sure to add every micrometer of the bunker to his power armor's memory before switching it off.

The room's darkness immediately became more than the footnote it had been; the glow Azkaellon had sensed had come from the reactor, and as such it was invisible and useless. Still, just enough light filtered in from outside and dials on the power source to let Azkaellon proceed, with caution, towards what appeared to be a skimmer analogue on the bunker's far end.

He still walked carefully, noting every possible trap; but it seemed there were none. The bunker's creators had been certain only sentients could escape the prior defenses. For all the renown of Catachan's wildlife, they had been right. In fact, most sentients would have died on the path Azkaellon had passed – even many Space Marines.

It was absurdly excessive; but then, everything on Catachan was excessive, and it seemed that this was as it had been in the time of its prior civilization.

Azkaellon advanced, considering the skimmer, which had to be capable of substantially aerial travel if it was to have use on Catachan. It had the appearance of a typical speeder for the most part, but with two long and pointed plates, parallel to the ground, sticking out its lower back. It was oversized, too; there were seats for four humans, plus an additional one at the front that was large enough for a Space Marine.

He walked up to the structure, considering the possible traps. There were too many to count, really. On a hunch, the Sanguiniary Guard took off his gauntlets, clipping them to his belt. Then he made another survey of the oil-black machine, noting the sleek construction – not Eldar-like, eminently human (unless it was some yet more ancient race?), but more careful than most Imperial machinery nevertheless.

It was a nice-looking engine; he hoped it was functional, too. More specifically, he hoped it would function for him. He grabbed the edge of the seat and pulled himself onto its floor, then took a seat in the captain's chair.

The transport remained inert, but Azkaellon could see an intricate control panel in front of him. There was no simple "on" switch, and the wiring within was heavily protected; but if intuitive design hadn't changed in the last few millennia, Azkaellon could roughly guess the primary controls.

He touched his left index finger to a small square to the chair's left.

Immediately, the engines sounded their screeching triumph, before dropping back to a normal volume. Meters and switches lit up, with pre-Gothic text detailing their functions; Azkaellon couldn't read it, but he didn't need it anyhow. The speeder lifted slightly off the steel floor, humming to demonstrate preparedness.

And above, the cavern ceiling parted.

Ten panels slid off, revealing a growing aperture. Near-blinding green filtered through, the signs of Catachan plants. Admittedly, a slight avalanche of packed dirt also spilled onto the bunker floor, creating a circle of potential life in the dead space of the bunker. Azkaellon wondered whether, in the end, his wonder at the complex was misplaced. After all, Catachan's ecosystem was even more dangerous, even more unique, and – vitally – alive. For all that the bunker's creators had beaten it back, they could never have surpassed it.

But these thoughts did not last long, for they were not significant. Duty called.

Azkaellon swept his hands along the panels, switching a couple of triggers. The speeder lurched, spun a hundred and eighty degrees, then shot up, leaving a shallow crater in the bunker floor. Azkaellon was forced to grip a wheel as the machine hurtled through the hole in the ground and above the undergrowth. Slightly spiraling, it continued upward until Azkaellon was facing the mountain, by which time the canopy had been pierced.

Then the Sanguiniary Guard pressed a pedal, and the speeder shot forth. Catachan sped past, green on green. The mountain grew closer, and Azkaellon cursed as he recognized it was not Karchak; he tried to tilt the engine up, but in doing so it flipped over, leaving Azkaellon and Aalitton hanging on only through the effort of the former's knees. Reaching, he managed to trip another switch and right the speeder, flopping back into the seat. Azkaellon took a moment to fasten an undersized safety belt; and then they were grazing the top of the canopy, leaves flying off the trees.

And then the forest disappeared in a living cliff, and the mountain – actually a volcano – was revealed in its full glory. It was several kilometers tall, and pocked with craters and magmatic rifts. Titanic beasts crawled around the structure, some large enough to snatch at the hundred-meter-high speeder. Fortunately, Azkaellon was moving too fast for them to succeed. There were grasses here between the lava, apparently enough to sustain a thriving ecosystem.

Azkaellon skirted the volcano's flank, rising perhaps a kilometer from his former level as he crested over a lesser summit. It seemed a summit from a distance, at least; up close, it was simply an enormous lava lake. Oddly enough, some brownish ivy even coated the crater's walls, above the scarlet liquid.

Then that, too, was past, and Azkaellon was descending. A new, bigger mountain with a skyscraping spire silently stood, silhouetting Karchak, which had been hidden by the volcano. Azkaellon took a deep breath of hurricane, and the speeder flew on, towards where Azkaellon had to be.


	14. Chapter Eleven

Underestimation's blood had watered the fertile soil of Catachan. Horus Aximand knew he and his brothers – even Horus himself – had expected the humans and Marines entrenched on the planet's surface to be smashed aside, even though that made their deeds appear senseless. In truth, Targost had not been a moron; merely a zealot.

Underestimation's waters had bloodied the tip of the Coalition's blade; but not more, not really. Targost had killed many of his former brothers, but their numbers were not much greater than those of his followers, and the Seventh Captain's sedition had not fallen on receptive ears. Despite the losses, despite the nearly successful rituals, the defenders really had been smashed aside, and the shock, if stinging, was no great blow for the Legion.

Still, damage – especially morale's damage – had to be controlled. And the edicts of the momentary war had to be carried out.

Horus Aximand sat next to Zalep Leximuno, newly minted Captain of the Sons of Horus' Seventh Company, and several other members of the Quiet Order. They were in the darkness, seated in one of the secret meeting rooms; Aximand had specifically ordered the lights be turned off as a matter of mourning, and Leximuno had found no reason to disagree.

"Well," Aximand said, "not much." He had to consider the reply carefully; it was difficult to enclose everything that had happened during the battles. "Not much, and everything. Targost was against us from the beginning – not exactly an Imperial spy, but aligned with the Warp powers. He attempted to corrupt us through the warrior-lodges."

Leximuno nodded. "He said as much to me a few days before the war, though I didn't understand what he truly meant then."

"Then," Aximand stated, "you will understand why the lodges must be disbanded."

Leximuno was silent; so Nibal Ethuez, of the 18th Company, spoke instead. "What? The vast majority of lodge members did not follow Targost! Are we not above purges?"

"Purges of organizations, not members," Ezekyle Donievr correctly noted. "This is not about killing brothers, Ethuez. This is about trying to eliminate a network many in the Legion have opposed from the beginning."

"And Lupercal has revoked his blessing," Leximuno observed, "hasn't he?"

"He will soon do so," Aximand confirmed.

Ethuez leaned back in his chair, which came close to cracking it. "So that's how easily we surrender? No attempt to rescue the lodges, at all?"

"No," Leximuno said with a sigh. "Targost ordered every member of the Seventh to join the lodges, you know – well, it was unenforceable, but there was at least strong encouragement. Things like that… he loved the institution, truly, was more occupied with it than with any of his conquests. And if he truly was against us all along, so were the lodges."

"Lupercal regretted having to make the decision," Aximand said, even as Donievr shrugged. "But it had to be made, our brotherhood's secret web washed away like so much dust."

"I still disagree," Altaur Astoluco opined, even as Ethuez calmed down. "What of brotherhood?"

"We'll have brotherhood still," Ethuez said. "This is not a great loss. It just… just feels like a step backward."

"It is a step toward simplicity," Aximand replied. "That is not the same thing. The river of time flows, and if institutions do not resist it, they become cluttered with the entropy of random complexity. We must change gradually – revolution leads to deeper chaos – and so we must destroy as well as create. That is the essence of destruction, Ethuez. Simplicity."

Leximuno shrugged. "And the lodges have been weakened by the climate of suspicion, anyway. It's become a paranoid mess, now. Incidentally –" and he stopped, taking a look at a figure near the single door, a slight dip in the darkness of the room that looked like the faint shadow of an Astarte despite the lack of a Son of Horus to cast it. At first, Aximand thought it was a crew member that had somehow intruded onto the meeting. But as he focused on the figure casting the shadow, Aximand realized it was more than that.

Even as Aximand shot up, Zalep Leximuno stepped forth with a blade flying out of its sheath, and the Callidus assassin made a dash for the door.

The Fifth Captain dashed towards them, even as the assassin snuck forth. There was commotion behind him; Aximand pushed through at a run, and then the assassin was fiddling with the instrumental panel, and the door locked as the captain finished sliding under its closing form.

A fraction of a second later, it was over. The others could get out later, of course, but Aximand was the only Marine who had managed to make it out in time to chase the assassin. That Callidus was already sprinting off into the hallway system, tens of meters away.

That was a race she could not win. Aximand followed, scrambling onto his feet, as the Callidus approached a corner; and then the Son of Horus was dashing forth, unarmored feet pounding on the plascrete, a rhythm of impending violence.

Even as the Callidus turned right, Aximand strode behind, a thumping run. She was faster than Aximand had expected, only time-caught moments slower than the Space Marine. That had not been true with the others; perhaps a more developed version of polymorphine, one that boosted power.

Was the Astartes' advantage eroding? Would this final war be won by Marines, in the end? Both sides had men to spare (and for all of Guilliman's denial, he had not yet fired on Horus, and that meant they were still on the same side). At the final cliff, who would strike that decisive blow – not the first blow, and not the last, either, but the one to turn destiny? For the last blow, whether it be Horus' or the Emperor's or Magnus' or Angron's, could well be an executioner's.

But that was months, years off yet. For now, there were merely two transhumans, Aximand gaining faster and faster. Impact resounded on impact, and as the Assassin rushed up a staircase, Aximand was already a step ahead every second, as exhaustion took its toll on the enemy's body.

And then the staircase ended, and the Callidus emerged into the Imperial Army's meeting room.

Aximand silently cursed, but chased after the shifting form nevertheless, never removing his eyes. Memories of prior chases emerged into his mind as the assassin shrank, even as Aximand's hand grabbed her featureless head and swung the absent face towards his own.

The Callidus leaned in, transforming into a woman once more, and tried to kiss him. A few moments later, she was dangling from the Fifth Captain's raised arm once more.

"Forgot you were all eunuchs," she said.

The truth was more complicated, of course, and it was rather hypocritical for a gender-switching being to insult others on sexuality; but that was irrelevant. It was also rather unlike a professional assassin to forget something like that, and that was very much relevant, but Aximand had no better explanation. A couple officers stood nearby, gawking, at Aximand and his captive.

"What do I do with him/her?" he asked of them as the silence stretched.

"Just torture the imp," one of the officers – Karasterios Organistenkos, Aximand remembered – said. "You've got stuff that can make them crack, surely?"

"I certainly hope not," Damed Ilabum – the other officer in the room – opined.

"Nothing can make them crack," Aximand said. And that was for the best. The Coalition didn't sanction torture, though the matter was not truly enforced either way. The Imperium, back when it had been a monolith, had officially forbidden such interrogation; but no penalties ever rained down on the Army regiments and Astartes that practiced it. How much of a golden age was the Imperium's youth, anyway? It had been a salient question then, and it remained one now.

In any case, the glare of a Primarch was typically more intimidating than torture, but that hadn't affected the Assassins, either. Aximand prepared himself to snap the prisoner's neck, only to be distracted by soft footsteps.

"Let me try," said a strangely toned voice.

Turning, Horus Aximand saw a xeno.

It was an Eldar – a female, Aximand recognized, though the genders of the Eldar didn't correlate with human ones particularly well. She was unarmored, and in general did not appear to be a warrior. Her left hand held a two-pronged staff, her right hidden beneath her robes.

"You're free to," Aximand said, sensing the change in atmosphere that came with a psyker.

The assassin gurgled and dropped limp, spilling poisoned spittle onto the ringed floor. Aximand looked at the Eldar in surprise.

"Suicide," she explained, "fluidfate – the Gothic word is polimorphyn, isn't it? – makes it elementary, she was dying when I came in." Aximand nodded; the assassin had exhibited strangeness in the few seconds before the Eldar entered. Still, it would be some time before Aximand could trust a xeno. The very fact that he was considering the possibility….

"I am Arbela Tholt, Seer of Craftworld Alaitoc," that xeno said for formal introduction. "Please tell these men to take their weapons off me."

Aximand snapped back into the universe, noting down details of Organistenkos' and Ilabum's poses. "Do so," he ordered. Then, back to Tholt, "I am Horus Aximand, Fifth Captain of the Luna Wolves."

Organistenkos lowered his weapon, eyes darting from side to side in mild terror. Ilabum did not.

"You are not my superior," he told Aximand. "And any xeno is an enemy of ours. How did it get in, anyway?"

Aximand reached out towards Ilabum. The admiral instinctively tried to pull the trigger on his lasgun, but by the point his finger was halfway to activation, Aximand's had reached the weapon; and half a moment later, the gun was crushed into scrap.

"I apologize," the Fifth Captain said. "These men are used to violence with xenos, not discourse. As am I, in truth." Then he turned to Ilabum again. "The end of the galaxy. The fall of humanity! Is your philosophy truly worth more than that?! We must stand together in these days, and when friends have turned to enemies, it is better that some enemies turn to friends as well. Or does your honor ask you to fight everyone in turn, until you alone are left?!"

Ilabum's eyes held churning fury, yet he nodded nevertheless. His gaze was that of a hero forced to retreat when no other options were left. Aximand had seen that look on the faces of his foes many times. It never saved them.

Still, Ilabum was not a foe, and this war was a civil one. So Aximand allowed the Admiral to retreat and sit down. A simple nuegyas chair from the lichen forests of Cthonia, far less grand than the admiral's uniform, which was itself only slightly more colorful than Lieutenant Organistenkos'.

"Don't forget we are on the same side, Astarte," Ilabum said. "In the future, when the Eldar betray you at the worst possible moment, remember this instant. But even if Lupercal makes a hundred more mistakes of this magnitude – this order comes from him, right? – I will still follow him. So I do apologize for making you look bad."

And with a massive thud, flipping the hazel chair onto the ground, Admiral Damed Ilabum of the Imperial Army left the room.

"Sorry," Organistenkos offered with an incomprehensible look.

Aximand shrugged.

"The culture of mankind," Tholt said, "does he do that often?"

"I don't know," Aximand replied, simultaneously with Organistenkos' "Yes".

There was a pause, and Aximand chose to continue. "There is a legendary work by one of the econo-philosophers of ancient Terra, named _Frailty of Titans_. It describes how, as the size of an organization grows, the fraction of its might used for infighting in an equilibrium situation also inevitably grows. Its external strength also increases, so stability is decent – an empire covering the entire galaxy would be plenty stable – but it would be as an idea, not as an entity. There's an additional portion describing the negative consequences of this. The Coalition is plenty large enough for serious dissent to be common, even in the human military, where most try to stamp it out far more than the Astartes. That is the shadow on the Great Crusade – even if it succeeds, and a galaxywide Imperium is created, only the permanent presence of supertranshumans like Horus and the Emperor at the helm could prevent frailty."

"The end of the Old Ones, an external force, many aspects in mystery, probably a local conflict," Tholt replied. "The end of the Necrontyr, internal dissent within the empire, a point of destiny, hub of the Way. Our doom, exclusively internal. Explanations abound. Yours, it is a solid one. Yet distant dooms, not immediate difficulties. Complacency…. Who was the author?"

"Her name was Wiggen," Aximand said, "but she was most likely an identity of the Emperor."

"Why do you trust it, if the Archenemy penned it?"

"Because…" Aximand paused, wondering why, exactly, the conclusions of Terra were ironclad, even if their sources had been compromised. "Because, first of all, this was before the Emperor's corruption. But even if it hadn't been, the logic does not depend on the source. Other econo-philosophers supported the conclusions."

"The logic does depend on the source, if the source is Chaos," Tholt answered. "It can corrupt any who believe it, as it did to your Emperor. And the Archenemy does not obey our mathematics."

"Our mathematics," Aximand replied. "Different science, but our mathematics. That is the core of our disagreement, is it not?"

There was a long pause.

"Tea?" Organistenkos eventually asked, before chuckling.

"Let us discuss something else," Aximand said. "I know little about your culture, for example."

"Very well," Tholt stated, "but first, I must repeat. Chaos does not follow our mathematics. The converse belief led to the end of our empire, it could lead to the fall of yours."

Aximand nodded; perhaps this was something to discuss with Lupercal. Regardless, as he prepared himself to ask the next question, the doors burst open once more.

It was Loken.

"The Primarch summons us," the Tenth Captain said without even a look at Tholt or Organistenkos. "Something is happening with the _Accursed Eternity_."


	15. Interlude: Angel

Sanguinius stood, within the Omnirift, before the Omnirift, it mattered not. His wings were bladed now, and his face was sharply contrasting gold. He was a Primarch; but there was more, always more.

He looked within the Omnirift, beyond the Omnirift; and he saw.

* * *

Twenty kings in a land of steel and sorcery, twenty heirs of the Imperial Legacy. Twenty castles, some great towers and others sprawling bastion-cities. Legendary wars, but also legendary construction. The golden age was past, but man had not diminished with the Empire's disappearance. Savage Lem, king of the frozen wastelands of Fenris; honorable Hodr, holding the Eternal Wolf over the Dead Domain; Maego, sorcerer of the south, builder of ocular pyramids, master of lightning and time; Chrul, the philosopher of the Infernal Strip, firebringer and protector both; Fuelog, alchemist of beauty. Perfect glory.

* * *

Twenty Dreadnought starships in an age of exploration, twenty dawns of science and progress in an infinitely complex universe begging to be uncovered. Twenty great captains, some eternal by machine and others by biology or chemistry, all entwined with the fate of their vessel. War is the greatest evil; utopia is under construction. Species is an arbitrary distinction. The physics of reality are on the verge of comprehensibility. Logical Petrubos of the _Igneous_ , secrets-bearing Leonidas Josos of the _Great Efreet_ , rescuer Volkenna of the _Promiseshard_ , ascetic Moortol of the _God's Tattoo_ , impulsive Jakig Kha-an of the _Endeavour_. Perfect progress.

* * *

Twenty hunter dynasties, loving and killing the monstrous, twenty great heroes leading the charge against the night. Twenty igniting dawns, some of exorcism, others of simple fire. Humanity cowers in fear; but not much longer. War will break the chains. Vengeant Anegora, who holds no creed beyond the memory of her blood family; Adam of the Storm, high priest of Torei, ancient yet fighting until the night ends; Konrad, the redeemed vampire; Fetton, blacksmith and silversmith, supreme judge in the witch courts; Alfressa, the changeling wanderer. Perfect beginning.

* * *

Twenty avenging heroes, united in a league of justice, twenty legends for a planet under constant invasion. Twenty sets of superhuman powers evading the temptation of greed. Allies and other worlds breathe in every direction, stoking the glow yet further. War? This is New Earth! Diorita, honor-driven earthbender and fistfighter; Robo-God, confident master of information; Cormorant, metal-winged invisible inventor; Lightgainer, priest turned vessel of nuclear fusion; Sightblood, bone-winged herald and inspirer. Perfect bombast.

* * *

And Sanguinius knew, then, what the Omnirift was insisting. This was not the correct universe, it claimed. Other truths should have been. Brighter ones. You can transform us, by the Second Order. Take back the infinity that should have been.

"Show me more," Sanguinius thought.

* * *

Twenty grandmasters of the twenty Arts, twenty bastions against evil both mortal and inhuman. Twenty titanic monasteries, inner vaults' mystery indeterminate. War exists, but true ki transcends all. The wheel of time spins around a core of truth. Ronen Gu, lord of Ul Rama – the largest school – and unifier of styles; Moteke, conqueror of death and brother to spirits; Kon Cuzi, bringer of law with both pen and fist; Lena Ruc, wolf-sister and avatar of nature ; Fuzham, eternal ascetic. Perfect serenity.

* * *

Twenty adventurer-captains on far more than twenty seas, twenty discoverers, some more piratical than others. Twenty fleets of gold and hope. Civilization is spreading, but that's not really the point, is it? War between, war alongside… but a nation is nothing without the spirit that destroys it in the end. Alpa Omman, spymaster turned pirate, believing in conflict as humanity's salvation; Anerken, the friendliest privateer you'll ever meet; Lorragea, wizard and fanatical servant of the Moresian Dominion; Makorretal, the greatest explorer of all, whether on land, sea, or air; Leona Al Jordal, leader of the surprisingly moderate Order of Order. Perfect freedom.

* * *

Twenty titans in stranger eons, twenty idea-storms resembling stability in a shifting world. Twenty gods, or perhaps antigods. The very existence of truth is but a question. War would require warriors, not humans. Charcoal, nexus of anarchic doubt's smoking blade at oppression's throat; Vunder, the spark of creation that burns within and consumes every single human being; Advent, Storm of Storms, blender of race, sex, and other identity; Re-Dawn, the Library of Sport; Core, the First Philosopher, initiator of constitutions and primal ideals. Perfect surrealism.

* * *

Twenty magical girls, twenty reincarnations of ancient legends in a world not used to the mythical. Twenty weapons of ancient star-dreams. War is a futile distraction from the roiling foundation. Sorcery is returning to the world, and all is in flux, if only for a crystal's blink. Hosura, the once and future queen, filled with furious compassion; Ferra Maess, the Lady of Wurms, master of carefully applied brute force; Khan Jaina of the Open Skies, fauna witch; Perebia, somewhat cynical geoengineer, commander of iron; Saisaela, holder of the Time Stones, sorceress of the eternal. Perfect radiance.

* * *

There were thousands more, trillions more; but Sanguinius had no use for infinity at the moment. And he understood the core of it, now. He could feel it, even; a simple mind-movement that would bring any one of those dreams to life and cage the galaxy, nay, the universe as just another nightmare.

He made his choice.


	16. Chapter Twelve

Raldoron had followed Sanguinius alone, at the Primarch's permission, despite Angelos' resistance. The others were preparing to depart, now; but the First Captain knew that, if this equilibrium broke in the wrong way, departure would save nothing. He trusted Sanguinius to solve the riddle in full; but he knew that he, himself, would be unable to. Walking the edge of hope was unbearable.

He was standing on a platform next to the Omnirift, Angelos and Draigo quietly conversing nearby. They had entered in the same way as before, but space had bent to bring them here. Here, at the edge of existence – nay, at the edge of essence. All that was and all that could ever be….

Perhaps this was, indeed, how the Second Order felt.

Raldoron stood, silently, watching the form of his father near merging with the rift; and then Sanguinius withdrew and hurled his glaive at Draigo, effortlessly piercing his fluid armor before catching the weapon's base.

"Why?" Angelos inquired, with failing fury, as his captain collapsed.

"You were tainted," Sanguinius answered, and for the first time since he had left the Omnirift Raldoron could see his eyes. They were pure gold, or at least seemed that way in the decisive moment, glowing with merciful doom. "You did not lie; but your perceptions were twisted. I am sorry. You were noble; but that was not enough to save you."

Angelos nodded. "And the Omnirift?"

"Just another Warp rift, more fundamental than most," Sanguinius said. "I will close it."

Angelos bowed his head, even as Draigo dripped onto the engine room floor, and Sanguinius bisected him in an effortless stroke before turning his gaze to the rift. He plunged his left fist into the reality gap, and Raldoron recognized the Primarch was singing, though he could not make out the words. Lines wavered, and as Raldoron looked on, unable to comprehend anything, unsure what he had to do (because there had to be something, right?), scrambling to don his helm, as vibrating strings and scarlet or golden circles intersected. Then, suddenly, the Omnirift began shrinking; Sanguinius yanked his hand out faster than Raldoron could see. When he stopped, the armor was pitted and charred black. The Omnirift had fared worse: no trace of it remained.

Then the Angel turned around, noticing his First Captain as if for the first time. The temperature of his eyes cooled to faint garnet, sliding into infrared.

"Run," the Ninth Primarch said.

They took off at the same time, descending the staircase; and then Sanguinius was ahead, though how that had happened Raldoron did not know.

"Follow me," he said, and of course the First Captain did, feeling rather childish and extremely confused, with a slight pit of despair within him from the shock of revelation. But there was no time to think, no time to digest what had occurred, as doors turned to staircases turned to windows. Sanguinius zigzagged, sometimes using his wings to help balance; he was not sprinting at anything like full speed, though Raldoron still found it difficult to keep up.

"The ship will be obliterated," Sanguinius noted. "The Omnirift was the only thing holding it up. Nothing will be left."

Somehow, only the darkest of thoughts wormed into Raldoron's mind. "This is... unpromising. These Marines were affected by Chaos?"

"As they admitted, but more."

"Are you certain you… weren't?"

"No subtle changes," Sanguinius replied, "of that I am certain. The Librarians will inspect me for the obvious ones."

Raldoron felt foolish; why was he feeling such near-fear? Had _he_ been affected? He voiced that concern, too.

"Almost certainly not," Sanguinius answered. "And before you ask, this should fix the Flaw too. The foreshock of their arrival was causing the unpredictability; then it was the discontinuity in time that owed its existence to the Omnirift. Both are gone now."

"Well," Raldoron said, the single tear drying on his cheek, "but… but won't the future they predicted still come to pass, if you didn't follow their instructions?"

Sanguinius turned his head for an instant, as he dove under a granite arch – Raldoron following as it became bleached – and showed a slight smile. "Oddly enough, they did prevent the future they lived. Their precise perceptions of the past were flawed, for they did not live it; the true doom of the galaxy came not with the fifth Chaos God, but with the sixth. The shockwaves as their vessel retreated in time extended to long before their arrival, and… and, in the foundation, the sixth Chaos God is now incapable of being born in the same manner as occurred in their timeline. They could have ensured the total triumph of Chaos, possibly even beyond the Milky Way. But in failure, they gave us a second chance."

There was silence, for some moments. Sanguinius soared upwards, Raldoron having to climb a rotating mountain; then they were on a sand-covered floor. As they ran across it, the sand shifted, turning from yellow to shining white. Then another door, this one glass, and they were in a long ivory corridor. Behind, the sounds of an incipient explosion could be heard.

"They were affected by Chaos during the journey," Sanguinius concluded. "Their trust in the Omnirift doomed them. But they did save us all."

"So the Omnirift wasn't of the Second Order," Raldoron said.

"It was not."

Raldoron invisibly nodded as they emerged into a great baleen hall. "So," he said, well aware of the darkness still profound in his mind, "is there no Second Order at all?"

Sanguinius audibly sighed. Then, a moment later, as the Blood Angels approached the opposite wall, he spoke once more. "There is," he said. "E the Nameless was somewhat inaccurate, but the essentials were all correct. The Second Order is real."

"How do we know?"

"Because," Sanguinius said, timbre giving away the magnitude of this proclamation, "I _am_ of the Second Order."

Finally, then, the sum total of the previous minutes dissolved in Raldoron's mind, all at once. Finally, the pessimism that had been devouring his mind since seeing the Omnirift die winked out of existence in a storm of light, even as - as, perhaps, the ultimate cause - he saw, in the distance, a second incipient flash. Suddenly, he had so many questions, so many new dawns; and as he opened his mouth to ask them, as they came to the wall's base, Sanguinius turned around and embraced him.

"Forward," he said as he shot to the ceiling. "I will explain everything later; I have kept too many secrets for too long. It is not the mark of good, to keep too many secrets. But for now, _run_."

Then the Angel threw Raldoron, as the ceiling collapsed. He landed on all fours, on a large ledge, Sanguinius dropping away into a different tunnel. Bending his head to avoid the low ceiling, he sprinted forwards through a fairly featureless red-white-black hallway, recognizing the familiar doors of a shuttle counting down to launch ahead. Then, entrance.

"Captain?" Kano inquired. "What happened there?"

Vendrenze and his Squad were there too; an interesting coincidence, to leave with the same brothers as he had arrived with. And, as the blast doors locked shut, clipping a small fragment of his left leg armor off, the Veteran Sergeant stepped forward and clapped his Captain on his shoulder.

"Congratulations on surviving," Vendrenze said, with joy surprisingly profound. "What of the Primarch?"

"I am sure Sanguinius has a plan," Raldoron said, wishing his words sounded truer. "As to what happened…. It was madness. Madness and doom, and somewhere in there, a glimmer of truth."

"It is always thus," Vendrenze opined as the shuttle shot off, hurtling at mind-stretching speeds. "Truth hides under destruction, or something like that."

"This is different," Raldoron said. "Sanguinius… he was more than what he usually is, there."

"He is always more than he usually is," Kano said. "All the Primarchs are such."

"Let's not reminisce too much. We're not safe yet," Vendrenze suddenly noted.

Raldoron confirmed this, for he could see the reason for Vendrenze's concern behind him. A massive bar had detached from the outer surface of the ship, spinning meters away from the back of the tiny vessel. If it had hit them, the power armor would have protected them from vacuum; but nothing would have protected them from the rest of the debris, rushing outwards in a white-hot explosion.

The physics of this collapse didn't make sense. A simple look at the rainbow geysers erupting from the _Accursed Eternity_ 's surface was enough to make that clear, and Raldoron didn't bother saving anything onto his retinal display. But though odd, and from a certain point of view beautiful, the end of _Eternity_ was still very much deadly.

"It's gaining on us," Gastent observed from the pilot's seat.

"It isn't," Raldoron contradicted. "It's slowing down." He looked at Kano for assurance, but the Librarian was holding his head clutched in his arms, desperately protecting his eyes from the explosion.

"It's about to turn around," Vendrenze agreed. "Now we're safe. Mostly."

Gastent seemed to emit a slight sigh, almost as if he sympathized with the fiery doom. Perhaps he did; it was, after all, somewhat sentient. But the shuttle flew on, spinning towards the _Red Tear_. For a while there was silence, only a couple of Battle-Brothers discussing their experience on the ship from the future.

Then, Kano gasped.

"Sanguinius," the adjutant remarked, "didn't escape in time." The weak conversations immediately stopped. "The fog of the Omnirift is lifted," the former Librarian continued. "I can feel – well – passively, I can feel my connection with the Primarch. He was caught in the explosion. Lost consciousness, but possibly still alive. I think we'd all feel it if he had fallen."

"Who can be sure, in this mad age?" Raldoron whispered. His world was spinning once again. Had the Angel truly ended, in saving Raldoron's life?

That would have been… a mistake most unlike Sanguinius, as everyone knew the Primarch was far above any one of his Marines. But mistakes happened, even among transhumans, and perhaps Sanguinius had been too certain of his escape to ensure it.

"He's alive," Vendrenze said, putting a hand on the captain's shoulder. Raldoron looked to the Sergeant. "He's alive," Vendrenze continued, "because he is Sanguinius. Because he has seen this moment, no doubt; and even if he hadn't, he would consider it. A Primarch can be vanquished only by one at a comparable level of superhumanity, and this Draigo was no more than another trickster. And he's alive because worrying about the alternative is irrelevant and greatly detrimental to morale."

Raldoron nodded. "I've been losing my composure too much lately," he observed. "Kano, send word to Azkaellon; the search parties should be dispatched. Everyone else, surpass my example and don't panic. We will survive this. Gastent – disengage from the conversation and prepare for contact. We are returning to the Council, returning to humanity from the jaws of time. Never forget this day, this day that lasted a full month; and never forget that, in the end, we defeated it, not the converse. For we are the sons of Sanguinius, brothers. We are the Angels of Death!"


	17. Chapter Thirteen

Devastation.

The scale of the ruin to his Company was only beginning to register in Dar Nakir's mind, even now. Of four hundred and twenty-six Space Marines, a hundred and ninety-one had survived the explosion.

It was incredibly callous of fortune to do such a thing. And it had been, in the end, simply blind, brilliant, terrible luck, tempered with errors on Nakir's side. Sanguinius himself, it was said, had screamed in pain at the sudden end of so many of his sons. Far worse disasters had happened, of course, during the Crusade, but Nakir could not recall a more absurd one; if it had been the traitors or the daemons that had killed so many of his brothers, his thoughts would have nucleated vengeance, but as it was there was only a panicked despair. No one to fight, and no one to blame except himself - such was the difference between losing brothers under his command in battle, and losing them to a (dead) toad.

And now he climbed into a fighter, at Azkaellon's command, preparing to search for his Primarch. Aezireze, now officially his second in the remnants of the Twenty-Fourth, unlatched the last cable and wordlessly waved as he retreated into the docking bay's depth.

Then the doors slid open, and Dar Nakir accelerated towards vacuum.

In the distance, white ruins marked the former location of the _Accursed Eternity_. They shone with reflected starlight in the vast emptiness, as if a celestial object. They were, Nakir remarked (as Aezireze had told him earlier), incredibly bright, far more so than should have been possible, due to the implosion's afterglow and the remaining effects, supposedly harmless, of the Warp Rift. Nevertheless, psychically it had at last become transparent, and the temporal distortion within had apparently ceased.

A pity in some ways – it would certainly have been interesting to experience again, even if the fighting had not broken out until the very end. Nakir grit his teeth to block out the memory that came unbidden in association, the thought of an orange serpent torn apart by jungle toxins, its one eye staring helplessly at doom.

The very end.

His hypno-conditioning would heal this weakness in time; he was circling his brain in on itself to let go. It would be easier after more war, in truth. He thought back to Amit and Ventus and the other Captains that, across the galaxy, were at the front of the rebellion.

Of course, it wasn't as if Horus and Sanguinius were wasting time on Catachan. He understood that well enough now. But somehow, he still felt unlucky to have been, at the time of the Council's announcement, close enough to Catachan to report, and not because of the toad incident. Perhaps that had something to do with why he had decided to join an extremely unsafe journey into a ruined daemonship, or perhaps it was his natural activity. Either way, he was in command of this particular mission, as the only captain on it.

The fighter dove, or skimmed, or rose through space, heading towards the ever-larger irregular white clumps. Nakir gave out orders for approximate search patterns; at first, they would circle the remnants from a distance, slowly closing a sphere around the angular chunks. He input the same orders into his ship's cogitator; there was no need to pilot before entering the debris, and he needed to be in a better mental state to pilot within it.

Circles spun, Nakir's ship veering, pushing him towards its ceiling. A few tiny pieces of debris were visible, but nothing of Sanguinius' size or larger. Then the assemblage of shining blocks began to swell, filling the viewscreens, and Dar Nakir shoved the controls back to manual. He grabbed them once more, skimming the outer bounds of the wreck before dictating the smaller teams that would explore the interior.

They responded with recognition, and two dozen fighters dove between the gleaming cracks. Nakir carefully directed his trajectory deeper, simultaneously slowing down. There was really no need to flatten himself into the debris; to be sure, speed was possibly of the essence, but with these numbers they had fair speed anyway. So he traced a path between pristinely white crew compartments that seemed to never have been used, doing his best (which was more than good enough) to avoid a few prominent spikes.

He dove into a perfectly round tunnel to his right, allowing the cogitators to form his general direction and focusing, instead, on piloting and looking around. One of the walls held a large diagram, a twelve-pointed star whose every point contained an icosahedron seeming to pop out of the engraving. At each iscosahedral vertex, a rune hung, two hundred and thirty-one of them flashing, four glowing unearthly colors, and five a dull, but threatening, gray.

Nine unusual runes – half the number of Legions. Or perhaps the sketch had something to do with daemons. Either was beside the point, here, yet Dar Nakir still parked his fighter into a stable orbit to get a closer look at the other object in the room.

It was an Astarte-height golden gyroscope, still somehow intact and spinning, although many of its surfaces bore scars from the implosion. Its axis of rotation pointed unerringly at – Nakir followed its path, and stared right at Catachan's surface. It should have been impossible to see it, he was too far into the _Eternity_ 's debris field to see it, but he most certainly saw it, because the block had a tiny cylindrical hole pointing along that axis. And it was not just any point on Catachan's surface; Nakir knew this terrain well. He had looked at maps of it to prepare for his Company's descent.

He wasn't scared, exactly; just excited, in a disturbed fashion. It was a positive emotion, but bereft of any affection for the likely tainted device. Nakir pressed the runes to power up his guns to minimum, and a moment later aimed them at the gyroscope.

A missile pounded into it, hammering it into the room floor and then letting out a slight explosion. Linear blocks of the gyroscope, long yellow gleaming cylinders of conclusion, detached, and Nakir depressed the acceleration rune again, blasting off before the debris of his creation could catch him.

Debris not of his creation still did. Nakir felt the impact at his fighter's tail; a minor hit, one the cogitator could correct for. The impactor had been a metal beam, detached from one of the tunnel's sides by Nakir's missile, which caused excited chatter.

"It was a Warp-affected artifact," Nakir stated. "Destroying it followed directive."

It was, admittedly, still unwise to blow anything up in a debris field, but it had at least been a small explosion.

Dar Nakir allowed his controls to be adjusted and then changed course, diving deeper into the debris, passing various large structures still recognizable as being from that white ship. There were places where large spheres of silvery liquid floated in space, the sensors identifying it as mercury. Wooden decks, of all things. Silverware, again lacking evidence of even rudimentary human contact. Some amount of weapons – although the swords seemed unpowered, relics of the millennia before the Golden Age of Technology. A fossilized tech-priest imprinted into a wall. The debris grew denser as Nakir approached the field's center, and the other Marines were reporting the same; yet still there was no sign of the Angel.

A wing passed within millimeters of a floating galactic hologlobe, whose contents were swirling uncontrollably as its internal cogitator's measurements of time and space broke down. For the most part, however, there were only white walls, one after another, in what was probably a tiresomely repetitive pattern jumbled up to a more interesting state by the implosion. Still, the high relative speeds of the objects that kept zooming by kept Nakir's focus from latching fully onto his surroundings, which he couldn't decipher anyway. That, too, was the reason why it took him several seconds to realize when he passed into a cloud of golden-colored dust.

But when he did realize it, he immediately saw his Primarch.

A sense of despair engulfed Nakir when he did. Sanguinius was stuck between two beams, laying on his front from Nakir's perspective, which was little trouble; but he lay unmoving, and unbreathing (though, Nakir considered, he could hardly be breathing in space). The majestic snowy-white wings curled around his form; they were undamaged, which was surprising considering the state of the Primarch's armor. Its front seemed to have sustained a massive impact, which had fractured it all over; in places, it was also seemingly charred and pitted. Sanguinius' body was intact, though, and his face was the same as ever, though the blond hair was cut short. Nakir stared at those closed eyes, dreading the confirmation of his fears. Still, he voxed the finding to his squadron.

Sanguinius' eyes opened.

Nakir paused to ensure it wasn't a hallucination, and saw – further – Sanguinius raise his hand in a signal to stop him from landing. Then, the Primarch extended his arms and pushed the "bottom" beam off himself, freeing himself into space.

And then, the Angel Sanguinius beat his wings, and flew towards Dar Nakir's fighter. The captain's first reaction was wonder that Sanguinius was still capable of that; his second was relief that his Primarch lived. Surprise at Sanguinius' ability to fly in space was, perhaps, twenty-seventh.

Nakir checked the seals of his helmet, and then threw open the cockpit. Sanguinius' flight was slower than normal, but within minutes he had landed in the cockpit, lying down on the back seats. In general, the presence of extra seats on the one-man Mightwing microfighter was an annoyance that kept it from common service; here, it was the reason the vessel had been chosen for this mission. That, and its tiny size.

Nakir closed the cockpit roof, and as it slotted into its final position re-pressurized the cabin. As he did so, he veered the craft, angling left to execute a full turnaround. Metal, plascrete, and all sorts of more esoteric materials zoomed by, and Nakir cursed as he charged against the falling rain. Still, he swerved enough to avoid serious damage.

"Um," he said to his Primarch when the high-density region was past. "How did you fly in the void, Father?"

It wasn't the best question; but Nakir was quite incapable of thinking of anything better at the moment.

"The same way I survived there," Sanguinius said. "A thin atmosphere was present, from the interior of the ship. But I would delay further questions until we exit the debris field, my son."

Nakir felt an instant of shame at not recognizing that – true, the atmosphere had been nowhere near dense enough to deserve the name, but it _had_ shown up on his instruments. And Sanguinius was correct, too, in that this wasn't the correct time for questions.

So in the next minutes, it was only Nakir and _Eternity_ 's legacy. Every unthinking attack that the debris made, Nakir dodged or parried with his guns. Not an efficient use of ammunition; but that, too, was irrelevant at the moment. Every shift of the vast maze, Nakir replied to with a shift of his own. One by one, his fellow explorers exited the cloud, none of them having gone quite as deep as Nakir, whether from caution or luck.

There was a strong distortion in the field's shape, enough to imply that some gravitational anomaly was at its core; that same distortion now lengthened Nakir's path, the way he had come in through now closed. Still, within minutes the black expanse of space was visible, and the fighter breached the surface like water, a droplet of red shooting up at a mild angle from vertical against a rocky plain of snowy white.

Then the _Accursed Eternity_ was past, and Dar Nakir flew on a slightly whining fighter towards the Legion sigil that was the _Red Tear_.

"This edge…" Sanguinius said. "A war in forests and caverns. The skies, berserk. A sudden end."

"A fulfilled prophecy," Nakir said with a slight frown. "The rebellion of Nryor and Targost caused a war across Catachan. The ship we just left was pure madness in the sky. And, aye, the explosion that ended it was quite sudden indeed."

"I am not certain," Sanguinius said. "There seems to be something else, something fainter, in the near future. Perhaps even some facet that explains why the Librarius pierced the prophecy, but I did not."

Nakir realized, there, the true reason for Sanguinius' concern. He was defined by his capacity for prophecy (albeit, of course, not primarily). Now the Primarch had failed to grab a truth from the Warp that comparatively average Astarte psykers did. Of course, there was a reason behind this; Sanguinius' foresight was strong. And yet Nakir did not know what that reason was, and neither did Sanguinius.

The Angel seemed almost human at that moment, feeling a brief spike of the envy so many Primarchs embraced.

"But that will be revealed without my interference," the Angel said. "For now, I have only this to say to you, Dar Nakir: that you must not let misfortune, even great ones, bind you."

And that, once more, was a return to making statements that Dar Nakir could not deny.


	18. Chapter Fourteen

Azkaellon's return had been cause for celebration among the Sanguiniary Guard, celebration which the commander looked back on with a smile; but it had, too, come at a time of crisis. What, exactly, had happened with the _Accursed Eternity_ was still unclear, with Raldoron and Sanguinius alike tight-lipped as much from not knowing the details themselves as from a desire for secrecy. All that was clear was that the ship had been corrupted by the Warp, and therefore had been destroyed.

As far as Azkaellon was concerned, that corruption should have been known from the beginning – at the very least, it had been suspected from the beginning.

There were other shifts, too, the biggest of these the conflict that was currently being called the Catachan Strikes. Casualties had been unacceptably high, in large part because of Warp interference again. Some of the survivors were mentally affected, and that caused Azkaellon additional discomfort – to be sure, Dar Nakir's recklessness or An Ziatton's newfound phlegmatism could be explained by normal psychological shifts, but emotions had of late become treacherous.

Azkaellon shook the thoughts from his head. They were his brothers, and it did not do to suspect them without solid reason. The commander knew as well as anyone the cost that paranoia could, and probably would, wreak on the Legion.

And yet the paranoia was all too close to being, potentially, justified. Still, suppressing these considerations, Azkaellon pushed the mysterious skimmer recovered from the bunker on Catachan up a ramp and into an ornate shuttle. It had been agreed he should be the one to present the discovery to the Mechanicum, by dual rights of discovery and convenience.

And by those rights, he soon piloted the shuttle towards Kane's current flagship. The _Kelbor-Hal_ was a convoluted, stellated shape, but geometric idealism had clearly been the main guiding principle in its construction. It shone as semi-dull silver, and its scale was not all that large – yet. Azkaellon had heard that Kane planned for the ship named after his predecessor to become a sort of human Craftworld, and it was even now being expanded by the assimilation of smaller spaceships.

Still, it was kilometers in diameter, and a significant if not dominant presence in the sky. And it was, now, slowly becoming dominant as Azkaellon approached. Access codes were interchanged with the ship's autopilot, and Azkaellon followed its directions to slot between two flaps and skim into a glistening tunnel. He knew noospheric content saturated the space around him, transforming it in ways he could not comprehend. That, already, made him far from the best choice for this mission.

And what made it worse was that, in truth, he wasn't sure he _wanted_ to comprehend these mechanisms.

That was not to say he didn't respect the Mechanicum for what it was: a vital part of the Imperium, and a boon to humanity. Still, there was always a persistent sense of unease, strengthened by the fact that for the thinkers of the Imperium, the Martians were rather close-minded (almost as much so as himself).

Azkaellon watched as his shuttle decelerated, seemingly of its own accord, while the grayscale tones of the walls became a kaleidoscope; but it was over within a minute, and then Azkaellon's spaceship was immobile in the Mechanicum's maw.

It was not alone in the hangar.

Kane himself was not present, but Azkaellon recognized the cyborg that was present as Magos Physic Ozekoo Anbrin, Kane's second-in-command on Catachan (the Fabricator Locum staying away for security purposes – a seemingly unnecessary precaution that now seemed extremely wise). Anbrin was still largely humanoid, although her torso had been replaced by something like an armillary sphere. She stood a few meters in front of where Azkaellon's shuttle had come to rest, undisturbed by the risk of getting run over.

Azkaellon opened the hatch and climbed out.

"You have the speeder?" Anbrin asked.

"Yes," Azkaellon said, and triggered the ramp (something, at least, that wasn't being controlled by the Mechanicum).

"Kane thanks you immensely," she said with a tinge of electrical excitement, "and apologizes for not being present himself. A relic from the Golden Age of Technology…."

"I'm here," Kane exclaimed as he ran in, metallic tentacles flailing wildly – or no, not wildly. There were patterns in them, probably some sort of secret message. "The Mechanicum thanks you for discovering it; it will soon be consecrated, investigated, and replicated."

Azkaellon bowed. "Thank you, Kane. I should remind you I found it by accident…."

"That only makes it all the more fortuitous," Anbrin put in.

That was certainly true, though Azkaellon didn't see how it was relevant. Was the Mechanicum trying to keep him off-balance?

"I would suggest moving the conversation to a more convenient location," the Fabricator-General said, "but I strongly doubt any of us actually care. In any case – I invite you to the consecration rituals. Yours will be the honor of naming this new class."

"I will perform it," Azkaellon said, "but what do you mean by consecration?"

"A few rituals, handwaving, and celebrating the mystery of the machine. And, of course, general preparation and analysis of the technology. Nothing overly fancy, and nothing at all related to the Warp. We're not mad, Azkaellon; some of us have a few bugs, but the Cult Mechanicus was around long before the Emperor unified Terra, and we haven't survived millennia by being absurd."

Azkaellon nodded. "I ask only that you use this design to further the greatness of the Imperium."

"Of course," Kane said. "What else would we use it for? But… walk with me, Azkaellon. Anbrin, take charge of the skimmer."

Azkaellon followed the Fabricator-General into the depths of the _Kelbor-Hal_ , watching from the corner of his eye Anbrin direct servitors to carry away the skimmer. Perhaps he would never see it again. In truth, he didn't care.

For a time, the transhumans walked in silence; the cyborg was the first to break it. "You're not here as a diplomat," Kane said as the pair crossed a bridge whose windows revealed a massive manufactorum landscape around it. "But I have a proposition nevertheless. I believe the Mechanicum and Blood Angels should cooperate more closely."

That was unexpected. "Why us? Why not, say, the Iron Warriors?"

"The Iron Warriors," Kane answered, "tend to prefer their own way. More, even, than most Astarte Legions. But no, there is a reason beyond that. Have you heard of the Trihexad?"

"I know it is a method the Mechanicum uses to organize the Legions. I am not aware of the details."

"The Trihexad separates the Legios into six Triads. One among them is the Cosmic Triad. The Blood Angels, of Time; the Emperor's Children, of Space; and the Thousand Sons, of the Warp. Of course, now one of that triad has betrayed progress, and two Legions are not part of the Triads at all; you know which two. The Trihexad was in its foundation an arbitrary set of distinctions, really." Kane paused as the pair exited the hall, walking into a long tunnel. "Now it is being replaced by more informative descriptions, like _Renegade_ and _Imperial_. But the Cosmic Triad – you see, Azkaellon, I did not get along with my predecessor too well while he lived. He was a greater believer in innovation and always dreamt bigger dreams. He wanted a new Golden Age of Technology. I was more cautious, warning him not to overstep the Emperor's authority. You know how that turned out."

"Why did he choose you as his second and successor at all, then?"

"Politics," Kane said. "To appease my faction, which was the dominant one among the Mechanicum, Kelbor-Hal ensured that his rule would be limited to his own lifespan. And even then, he was no king. But after Ferrus betrayed us and took Mars, as it became clear our relationship to humanity had changed… we were scattered and broken, yes, but we all felt Kelbor-Hal's dreams in those days. We knew we had the chance to let humanity move the stars once more."

"Move the stars?"

"Sol for one,," Kane said as a matter of explanation. Azkaellon nodded; the legends, and the Emperor, had always said that Terra's star had initially been located in the galaxy's outer arms, not near its core as now.

"Can we even trust the Emperor's reports on those times now, though?"

"The Mechanicum's records agree with them," Kane replied, in a tone of absolute confidence that Azkaellon found it difficult to even mentally dispute.

And then the tunnel ended, and Azkaellon stood atop a cliff.

Behind steel handrails, a massive hall, hundreds of meters high, stretched. Far below, Azkaellon saw massive machines laboring, transporting various currents of materials; tiny Adepts scurried between them. A large collider pipe crossed the hall about half a horizontal kilometer in front of Azkaellon, and beyond it the titanic room's floor began to rise ever so slightly in an accelerating fashion. About four kilometers, horizontally, from Azkaellon the floor's curvature was such that it became a wall, though artificial gravity ensured that it could be walked on without difficulty; and then, as the Blood Angel traced the floor further, it curved in and far above Azkaellon became a ceiling, with more mysterious engines. The tones were for the most part gray and red, and the cog was everywhere, on all length scales. Aircraft of various sizes patrolled the emptiness in front of Azkaellon; as he watched, one swarm of miniature fighters launched a flurry of laser pulses at a large "carrier".

"Well," Azkaellon commented, as he felt he had to, "it's very impressive, though… not what I expected."

"Yes – the Mechanicum isn't traditionally into big, empty rooms," Kane said, "even to test aircraft. But we're changing." The Fabricator-General paused, and Azkaellon felt him try to find the words; no doubt he knew exactly what he was going to say in binary, but the discussion was proceeding in Gothic. "That is the my overall point. We will reclaim the stars for humanity, Azkaellon. We will ascend to become as gods, without losing that which made us human. We have been freed from our chains, you see. So – can I count on your Legion to rise with us?"

Azkaellon paused. He was suspicious; the Blood Angels and Mechanicum had never been too close, and Kane's offer had come out of nowhere (although to be sure there were easy explanations, and he wouldn't have done it differently himself). Besides, he couldn't speak for his entire Legion, and Sanguinius was already close to both Horus and Guilliman.

But if Azkaellon's experience on Catachan had taught him anything, it was that sometimes, there was just no way to account for all the variables. And Kane's speech had touched something in Azkaellon.

Perhaps it was his dreams.

"I don't fully know the mind of Sanguinius," he carefully said. "But I, for one, would readily accept. We have embraced the darkness of the world for too long. It's time for mankind to strike back. And we do have something, it is true. Perhaps something even you can never understand. Something interwoven with the fabric of time." He wondered if he was making any sense to Kane. "Something of the Second Order."

"Your Legion has some secret meaning attached to that concept," Kane observed, "does it not? And I was not talking about Sanguinius alone, Azkaellon. The Legions are more than their Primarchs. They existed before their gene-fathers were found, after all."

That was off-target, though. "Sanguinius… No, Kane, Sanguinius _is_ our Legion. He defines it. The Legion could exist without Sanguinius; but as long as Sanguinius lives, even if there were no Astartes around him, the Ninth will endure."

"Five times Legion average, minus four times human average, was how it was explained to me," Kane said. "By Malcador, as it happens."

Azkaellon continued to gaze on the artificial landscape with part of his vision, picking out a trillion details. Even he had no idea what was going on in most of that area. No one outside the Mechanicum truly understood the tech-priests. Even the Astartes were better-understood; at least they had remembrancers.

Perhaps that was the reason for their mystery cult. They knew they were unknown; so why not codify that secrecy? But, of course, now the Mechanicum lived in a time of secrets' breaking. The Imperial Truth had been devised for many reasons; but the fundamental cause was in the name. The truth was that there were no gods, at least none worth worshipping, and there was no reason to promote fiction when the fact was known.

"What are the Legions?" Kane asked, and Azkaellon noticed he was now standing with his hands on the railings, much like the Sanguiniary Guard. "And far more importantly, what could the Legions have been?"

"What is the Mechanicum?" Azkaellon retorted. "We know ourselves least of all."

"Oh, no. I can give you the full twenty-page definition of the Mechanicum, but suffice it to say I know my place – we're a community of technical experts. A professional society on stims, one might say. But the Astartes are a family, an army, an ideology, and a nation rolled into one. That is the reason your kind fascinates people in ways mine does not." Kane paused. "And that is the reason, in part, why I ask for this alliance. We should leave to the consecration, now. And destiny."


	19. Chapter Fifteen

"Very well," Raldoron said. "What _is_ the Second Order?"

He was sitting opposite Sanguinius, in one of the Primarch's many sanctums scattered across the _Red Tear_. The First Captain suspected that the Angel had one of those for every high-ranking member of the Legion to meet one-on-one in, plus several that were truly private. This specific room, which Raldoron had visited several times before, was cone-shaped, pointing upwards into a dazzling mirage of the Baalite night sky. The bottom of the cone was gilded, with images of battle between sand creatures, mutants, and Baal's humans. It was among these frescoes that Raldoron sat opposite Sanguinius, in two identical chairs that very slowly rotated around the center of the room. Even the wing-slots on their back were copies of each other, though of course Raldoron wasn't using them.

Sanguinius had invited him here to discuss, as promised, his semi-cryptic remarks on the _Accursed Eternity_. Raldoron had chosen to start with the obvious question.

"The realm that is to the Warp as the Warp is to our world," Sanguinius said. "It really is as simple as that. In illogical terms – it is eternity."

"So – is it evil, like the Warp? Does it contain xenos? Is it timeless?"

"The Warp is no more evil than the Materium," Sanguinius said with a frown. "There are merely monsters that reign within it. I do not know what lives within the Second Order, not profoundly. Yet given that Warp 'daemons' are effectively evil incarnate, I doubt the life of the Second Order is more twisted. Though that, too, is a real chance." The Primarch paused. "As for timelessness, no. Its time is different from ours, but it is neither timeless nor entropic."

"But time is defined by entropy! Or – is that only in the Materium?"

"The logic of the Second Order makes as little sense to the creatures of the Warp as the Warp makes to our humanoid minds," Sanguinius answered. "It does only have one dimension of time. I envision – though I have no bind to it whatsoever – that the Third Level has four."

"How?"

"Do not ask questions whose answers even I obviously cannot comprehend," Sanguinius said with a grin. "Sufficiently distant destinies qualify as such, also."

" _Do_ you see how the war will end?"

"I couldn't even see Guilliman's decision; the Emperor, I believe, couldn't either. Long-range foresight is loopwise blind. The future is too irregular at the moment, too… chaotic. There is no probability-attractive path. Guilliman…. You sympathize with him, do you not?"

That question rather shocked Raldoron. "Yes," he said after a moment of gathering his wits. "I realize the Legion has sided with Horus, and I am vastly more loyal to it and to you, but the new future he is forging, the lack of continued sympathy for a Master of Mankind gone mad… these are appealing. And the Ultramarines have always been close to the Blood Angels."

"We will help them when the time comes," Sanguinius answered. "Do not be ashamed of these beliefs; remember that there are only two sides in this war. Guilliman is, at the moment, an ally of the Coalition. Later we could slosh into the same singularity. These are fluid boundaries, between friend and ally. We have but one enemy, and it is the Chaos Imperium. But I suspect you have more to ask about the Second Order?"

"Yes – what, specifically, is your connection to it? Are you just a psyker, but with the Second Order replacing the Warp?"

"Ah, that," Sanguinius said, and Raldoron felt his hearts somehow spin. "That is an interesting question. To begin with, if one believes Magnus, we Primarchs are all latent psykers in some way or another. That is part of our fabric. I do not know if he is correct, but I am absolutely psychic in nature – only my specific connection to the Warp has woven a second connection, a link to the faintest of dreams, the most infinite of dusts. I am not as close to the Second Order as even a weak psyker is to the Warp, but I can sense it – one of a very few beings in this galaxy that can."

"As for the nature of this connection," he continued, "most of my prophetic powers are of the Warp, not the Second Order. And yet I am _of_ the Second Order in a way I am not of the Warp. I doubt it can be explained to one who is not bound to these whorls. Still, they – you – can feel that in my ethereal soar."

"And that distance," Sanguinius went on, "is present in Baal as well. I have only recently come into the wideness of such truths; only when I unburdened myself as to the secret of the Flaw. But it was no accident that I landed on the homeworld. Not the forces of the Warp at work there – I hope – but simply non-linear time. We were what we had to be."

"And when the Emperor turned to the antistars of Chaos, what we had to be changed. We have looked within ourselves, seeking out some solution to the Emperor's power. For me, that solution was in a connection I have long left quiescent except for prophecy. For my brothers, other things. When faced with a sufficiently towering edifice, risk becomes much more palatable. I feared – yes, feared – that the Second Order would overtake me. And yet," Sanguinius concluded, "I embraced it anyway. Embraced time, embraced distance. Embraced the afterglow of origin's dawn and the singularities that defy dimension. Because if we lose, this is assuredly the last war that will change eternity; and it may be the last even if we win."

The chairs continued to rotate, Sanguinius' words echoing in Raldoron's mind. He found the scale hard to comprehend. The Blood Angels were fighting not only for unity and truth now; they were crusaders for everything. Still, he was truly proud for the first time that he was a warrior in this brothers' conflict. When one put it as Sanguinius had, it was hard not to be proud.

"The Warp affects the Second Order," he said eventually, "does it not? Like realspace affects the Warp."

"And that is the true danger of this war. Loss will not lead to salvation from beyond the beyond." Sanguinius paused. "It has been lightening to explain this to you, Ral. You may feel my words have largely charged past you; but there are very few others who could understand this at all. I have not shared this with a soul before, except for you; who else should I open the gates to, do you think?"

"Horus," Raldoron said without thinking. "And Azkaellon. Beyond that, I'm not sure anyone needs to know – maybe Berus?"

"We Primarchs have kept our final powergrabs to ourselves," Sanguinius noted. "But Azkaellon and Berus – aye, I will tell them, in slivers at least. The latter might even lose some skepticism."

"I find that hard to believe," Raldoron said with a chuckle. "I think he still only half-believes in the darkness of the Warp."

"Not darkness," Sanguinius answered. His gaze had once more turned self-contradictory. "The Warp is not chiefly evil. Aphgori said, some time ago, that we are walking into the shadows, which we are. But imagine a world without the Warp. Where the ideals of the Imperial Truth are not just valid, but trivially true. Where there are no xenos except the most mundane, no psykers, no Primarchs or Emperor. That world is capable of forging a utopia for a million years. And yet it is still, in a way, darker than the universe we live in, because that realm is ultimately doomed. Because heat death, from which the Warp spares us (at a terrible price), will claim its head; and long before that, the loss of wonder, the loss of interest, will degenerate perfection – because perfection is _possible_. A finite utopia is nothing compared to infinity. And infinity is what Chaos threatens; if they win what the Eldar call the Rhana Dandra, there will be an infinity, but one of evil."

"And therefore," Raldoron said, "we - "

And then something _changed_.

Raldoron felt alone in a way he had not in a long time. As if his brothers were not there, as if his gene-father was not sitting right in front of him.

"Psychic short," Sanguinius said.

"What?"

The Primarch was already springing from his chair. "All foresight countered; all psychic powers briefly delayed. The Warp has been locked off. It all ends suddenly. It all ends suddenly."

"And the Second Order?"

Sanguinius strained. "I see… Horus. They're attacking Lupercal."

By the time he had finished that sentence, Sanguinius was shooting upwards, towards the room's conical ceiling. Then he pierced the night sky of Baal, and Raldoron could hear the Primarch open a door above; then he was completely gone.

Raldoron sat in silence for half a moment. Then, jumping out of his chair and exiting the sanctum in a more conventional fashion, he thumbed his vox. This was too sensitive to tell the entire Legion, but that was no reason to leave the Warmaster in danger.

"Azkaellon," Raldoron said, "tell the Sanguiniary Guard to find Horus. All of them. Assassination attempt."

"Let the Sixteenth deal with that for once," Azkaellon grumbled. Then, without pause, "Understood. I'll order the Guard to the _Vengeful Spirit_ , and tell those already there to converge on Horus' position. Out."

As he stood in the silent hallways of the high _Red Tear_ , Raldoron hoped it would be enough.


	20. Chapter Sixteen

"I guess the assassins messed up somehow," Loken said. "The Mechanicum models say we've caught almost all of them, and so does the lack of sabotage."

Abaddon shrugged. "They bit off more than they could chew."

"You say that metaphorically," Torgaddon observed, "but my power armor still has scratches from when one of them tried it for real."

"That was a lost Ork," Loken interjected.

"I'm almost certain it was, in fact, an assassin disguised as an Ork."

Loken threw up his hands in frustration as Abaddon chuckled. Aximand only slightly smiled; the levity of victory was getting to him, but he still worried that it was misplaced. The Callidus assassins had been unveiled, or at least contained; clearly the Emperor hadn't sent his best into this mission. Why was a completely different question.

He'd let the Warmaster worry about that, though.

The Mournival was meeting in one of the vast hallways of the _Vengeful Spirit_ , walking through the less grandiose parts of the Sons of Horus' flagship. The meeting had somewhat degenerated, however, because it was too late for the Council of Catachan to achieve anything truly new, but too early to discuss future assignments. The next two weeks would be filled with bureaucracy, and then it would be back to a war of annihilation.

Aximand suspected the commanders of the Sixteenth Legion had been left at Catachan so that Horus could teach his sons some level of politics. It hadn't worked very well. True, Abaddon had become somewhat less blunt , and Loken more open; but it wasn't as if either of them were actually trying to act rather than react. Aximand himself was more interested in the Eldar, and the possibility of finally earning diplomatic relations with a major xeno race. Of course, that did rather destabilize the very concept of the Great Crusade….

Torgaddon, by contrast, had recovered well from his earlier disorientation to make a number of influential friends. The Second Captain's nature suited it, perhaps, but Aximand could swear Torgaddon had never been quite so manipulative with his jokes before. But even that melted away among brothers; the Sons of Horus emphatically avoided scheming against each other. Then again, Horus would have to be mad to try and change that.

"Little Horus?" Abaddon asked, and Aximand realized he had been distracted for the conversation.

"What?"

"What do you think about the – wait. Vox from Maloghurst."

There was a burst of static, and then the voice of the Primarch's equerry – the man known as the Twisted, who took the title as a compliment. "Lupercal in danger," Maloghurst said. "Get to him – Owebor Statuary, near your position. Assassination attempt."

The Mournival began their sprint immediately. "Is this from the Librarius?" Loken asked.

"I'm unable to contact them. This is from a convergence in threat lines. The Mechanicum refuse to see it because it doesn't match their models, but Horus' life is threatened."

For a moment Horus Aximand had doubts; but then the Mournival burst into the Owebor halls, and it became obvious Maloghurst was right.

There were no statues in the statuary. Instead, men and women in black bodysuits, polymorphine obviously coursing in their veins, mobbed the Warmaster, doing their best to drag him down. Horus fought without a weapon, throwing the assassins into the bulkheads with his bare hands.

The Mournival were not unarmed; it had been no coincidence that Maloghurst had contacted them, after all. Not their battle weapons, ceremonial arms, but perfectly functional nonetheless. Abaddon carved into assassins with crackling lightning claws. Torgaddon and Loken wielded powerswords, glimmering with silver light in the darkened room. And Aximand's chainmace, a unique combination of criss-crossing spinning rings, sprung into fury.

He smashed aside the assassins, but the Warmaster was far away, and being backed towards a corner. From the corner of his eye, Aximand noticed that Abaddon was making good headway towards the Primarch; and then one who could actually fight came up before Aximand, and with that long-term delay.

Aximand aimed his weapon at the assassin's head, but it was only a grazing strike, and he or she (it was impossible to tell even which the Callidus was at the moment, much less what was the assassin's original sex) transmuted that head, flowing to receive only a scratch. Aximand continued the swing downwards, but before he could finish it a stray air current warned him of enemies behind. The Space Marine spun while wrenching the chainmace in an arc, almost accidentally knocking away another assailant's sword. The enemy he'd felt earlier, surprised, was simultaneously crushed and torn apart, becoming paste; but by this point the first assassin had fully recovered, and plunged a probably-poisoned dagger into Aximand's knee.

The centrifugal force of his spin threw the dagger, and the assassin, off a moment later, with the dagger having penetrated only about halfway through the armor. Looking around, Aximand noted between moments that Loken and Torgaddon were fighting back-to-back, exchanging quick quips as they did; but there was no chance of Aximand doing likewise with Abaddon, because the First Captain had advanced so fast in his desperation to reach the Primarch, who himself fought on.

They were winning. These assassins were infiltrators, not warriors; they had failed to kill Horus Lupercal immediately upon revealing themselves, even en masse, and they were unlikely to do so now. But if so many had so successfully escaped detection, there had to have been others.

From now on, Aximand suspected, the Imperium of Man would have excellent information on the actions of the Coalition. Psykers existed, of course, but their attempts to pry into the Callidus riddle had always been frustrated, for unknown reasons. Did polymorphine interfere with the Warp in some unfortunate way?

He walked toward Lupercal, well-aware of how welcome this moment of respite was; and then the assassin from before was on him again, extending an armored hand into Aximand's boot. The Son of Horus smashed his mace down, grinding off the limb. It stayed there –

And then it flew from Aximand's hands, as his enemy's arm morphed into a shorter version of itself with the weapon clutched in it. A blow from behind; he kicked that assailant off, running towards the earlier one. They dropped the stolen weapon (their right hand a mess of scars from that grab, which really shouldn't have been able to work) and gasped, eyes widening in alarm. With an Astarte barreling at them, even the assassin froze up.

Only an instant of hesitation; but long enough for Aximand to jump at them, grapple them to the floor, and simultaneously squeeze their head off their body. He picked up the chainmace in one further motion, sweeping it to crush another one's legs, and then took off towards Lupercal.

He wasn't fast enough.

From the many-folded walls, a monster leapt into the center of the melee. A human monster, not severely misshapen; a photograph of this moment would barely even notice him. But his very presence caused pain to flare in Aximand's forehead.

Culexus. Pariah.

He held a golden sword that shone with runes of power. His left hand was outstretched, a shining ultraviolet skull held aloft; the significance of that, Aximand did not know. He wore a black bodyglove, and his long hair, striped black and white, swept behind him.

Even the Callidus assassins recoiled, the utter anti-psychic field a terrible assault on their minds. Torgaddon and Loken sagged to their knees, whereas Aximand himself felt the cold floor on his face. (When had he fallen? Did it matter?) Yet he still saw, barely, that Horus was toppling backward, eyes closed, before a single blow had been struck. Ezekyle Abaddon, despite all odds, remained standing, though evidently not with ease.

The pain grew, but Aximand managed to crawl onto all fours. Loken was even more severely affected. Torgaddon stood over his unconscious body, prepared to fend off the assassins that did not come. The battle had stopped. The only one that was truly unaffected by the Culexus was the Culexus himself.

That monster flew toward Horus, and Aximand's eyes widened as he felt the aura of that weapon. (He was no psyker, he knew, but somehow the sword – the _anathame_ – got through even to him.) It was a fragment of the time of ending, a position where the eternal died and the ephemeral stretched into eonal tones. A nightmare of collapsing towers.

"The battlefield recedes," Loken muttered, "you blink: What happened here? What happened was, on this pink day, a sample mere."

The assassin thrust his sword forwards, aiming for Horus' heart. And then Ezekyle Abaddon was there, screaming in pain from the proximity to the Culexus. (The Callidus were already starting to recover; why such an end?) The anathame hit Abaddon's right shoulder, sinking slightly into it, and then the Culexus landed, slamming the First Captain of the Sons of Horus into the ground. The hall rang in mourning.

The Culexus pressed, and Ezekyle Abaddon's right hand skid across the floor, the first casualty of a blade that could fell a Primarch.

Abaddon slumped, his breath spent, destroyed by a blow meant to kill Lupercal himself. Horus Aximand stood up, only barely in time to elbow away a Callidus; but there were too many others. The Warmaster, meanwhile, raised himself once more, but his eyes were still closed, and though his face was contorted in fury, it was also contorted in pain.

Loken rattled on, speech rushing faster and faster but remaining perfectly coherent and even comprehensible. Nonsensical, of course, but still. "The dream that has faded is one dream of many, and nightmares are rising, with worse things to fight them. An iron star rises. A turquoise ascension. The beacons of treason, gods live and gods topple, all worlds are divided. All take back the cosmos. The city resurgent. The tide unforgotten. And after? True heroes, they come to the time of their essence. Collision. But never. I won't say the future. I'll never explain it. For foresight is evil – he said that himself, the ideal of humanity, fallen, unfallen, are they not the same in the wake of apocalypse?"

Loken spoke on, but by that point the words were too fast even for Aximand's hearing. So he looked, instead, to the Culexus, who was raising the anatheme for a final stab –

A whirlwind of garnet and gold smashed through the wall, and a spinning Sanguinius slammed a speartip into the assassin's back.

The Blood Angels' Primarch landed, raising his spear, on which the Imperium's finest was impaled.

The black skull and anathame dropped out of his hands, falling, unbroken, onto the floor.

And the world was covered in platinum light.

Moonlight, stardust. The lamps above twinkled. A wall of white fire, searing the Callidus horde's flesh from their bones; Aximand barely noticed it rush past. Calm compassion, combined with spiritual fury. Unity. More than that – humanity.

In the center of it all, Horus Lupercal, Warmaster of the Coalition, stood, eyes frozen fire. Next to him was Sanguinius, an angel at the side of a god.

Aximand did not understand, and he knew that, if anyone asked him the next day, he would at best describe these moments in incoherent mumbling. But he knew he felt at peace, not simply with the universe, but with truth. The snow-like flames reached the room's walls and faded into the greater brilliance.

And then a tendril of molten sky swept from Horus' hands at the black skull and punched into it. For a moment, there was nothing, and then the skull was gone, as was the platinum glow and the rest of the power-figment. There was only the Owebor statuary (bereft of its statues), two conscious Sons of Horus, one unconscious, one possibly dead, and two Primarchs in the center of it all.

"You could've kept the skull," Sanguinius observed. "Battle."

"Corruption," Horus answered. "Probably. And more certainly, I am not divine."

"What _was_ that?" Aximand inquired, as he got to his feet.

"A psychic amplifier," Lupercal said. "The Culexus are mighty weapons against those with psychic potential; but the potential of most humans is weak. The skull increased the psychic abilities of its surroundings – abilities which could not be used, because the pariah's anti-psychic powers were also vastly inflated. Until, of course, Sanguinius speared him."

"So that power was dependent on the artifact."

"No," Sanguinius answered. "That power is part of Horus, but indirectly."

"Primarch metaphysics," Horus said. "Even I don't get it."

Sanguinius grinned. "If you think I do…."

Aximand nodded, but it still felt, to him, improper to laugh when the assassination attempt had in fact, claimed one casualty with that Primarch-slaying sword. Torgaddon evidently felt the same. "And Ezekyle?" he asked, having finally shaken Loken half-awake.

"Almost conscious," Lupercal said, and the knot in Aximand's soul dissolved. They had made it. Somehow, they had all made it, and the Mournival remained unaltered.

Only a few seconds later, as the Sanguiniary Guard ran into the hall, Abaddon's eyes opened.

"So," he asked, blinking. "What happened here?"

"What happened was," Sanguinius said, "on this pink day, a sample mere."


	21. Epilogue: Horus

The Council of Catachan was, for all intents and purposes, complete. Horus Lupercal, Warmaster of the Coalition, moved his fingers across the eldar organ and mused on eternity.

The organ (though calling it such was only an approximation to the instrument's complexity) had been a gift from the Eldar Craftworld Alaitoc's delegation, part of an exchange to commemorate the alliance. Horus had known that humanity had less in the way of ingenuity to offer the Eldar, so he had instead given away a large archival spaceship. Its delegation of remembrancers were to stay with the Eldar for some time, learning about the alien species; an official delegation of eldar Artists would also be present aboard the _Vengeful Spirit_.

None of them were here now; only Horus, Sanguinius contributing to the melody - the organ was possible to play for only one Primarch, but more complex music could be produced by two if they worked in harmony - and Ethyn Tandrith, the leader of the Eldar delegation, observing.

The song drifted out, rebounding through the acoustic funnels of the organ, both physical and psychic, to produce a melody of reflection.

"Abaddon," Sanguinius observed, "appears quite taken with his new arm."

"It's the best one in the Imperium," Horus said. "Unless you count Ferrus…. How is Raldoron?"

"More relaxed," Sanguinius answered, "but not overly so." Pause. "You still have that moonlit power, you know. It is useful to know oneself."

Sanguinius was not wrong; Horus had awakened his psychic potential in that battle against the assassins. It had not been necessary thus far – without a powerful Culexus, there had been little trouble in rooting out most of the Callidus infiltrators, although surely some in the Army fleets had evaded scrutiny still, and would serve as spies for a time. Independently of that, however, Horus was now not just a passive psychic being – that, all the Primarchs were – but a potentially active mage.

He was not happy about that. "Such power holds extreme danger," he said. "And I have no desire to lose my connection with mankind, either. I am still nowhere near the level of Magnus, or even your level, without the amplification of that skull; so this is not a key strategic weakness. And if I embrace this light, it is all too likely to destroy me."

"The Eldar unite in psychic powers, our dark kin abandon them, the Warp is not evil," Tandrith put in.

"But the Eldar are still greatly distinct from mankind," Horus replied. "Your moral system is tilted, and that with a biology designed to compensate for it. We Primarchs can fall. And that, now…." His power was in politics, in the realm of the physical mind. Guilliman had emphasized that Primarchs were more than warriors. Well, he needed to demonstrate that they were more than psykers.

"I understand," Sanguinius said.

Tandrith did, too. "Your path is not of the Seer, human analogue despised, no reason to reveal oneself. But remember – we fell not because of psychic powers, the Warp was only a mechanism, the reason was in our physical hearts."

Horus remembered the tales of the Fall of the Eldar. The xenos never spoke of the event in great detail, but the essence of it was that the pursuit of pleasure over millions of years, even by a fairly small empire, was sufficient to spawn an unintentional Warp God from nothing. Slaanesh had then devoured the gods of the Eldar – all, Tandrith said, but four: Khaine, god of war, Cegorach, god of trickery, Isha, god of healing, and Qah, god of night – and the entire Eldar empire, leaving only a few refugees.

"I do not want you to fall," Tandrith said, "because you are our last hope, so do not imagine yourself ever truly safe. What could have been, what could yet be, all has been thrust into uncertainty."

Horus smiled. "You're used to certainty. Humanity is not. We have ourselves, and thus we have all mankind."

Sanguinius slowly nodded as the melody began to crest. It flowed in ways quite unlike human music, but its beauty was undeniable. "And, Autarch Tandrith, before the Warmaster makes his pronouncement, I feel you are evolving one as well."

"Fluidly and fracturedly yes," Tandrith said, "though some of us will vehemently deny me on this, Comorragh and Biel-Tan alike. Before the subject of our mythology, the Eldar were created by the Old Ones, one of several species to fight a war against metallic monsters. The realspace component of the War in Heaven, a time before the Enemy awoke, believed to be the war to end all wars and decide the inheritor of the galaxy. The Old Ones may have been ceratopsid, their homeworld's civilization was destroyed at war's end, tectonic weapons and an asteroid thrown into the surface. The councils have discussed this, sixty-five million Terran years ago is within the accepted time frame, the original home of the Old Ones was at the galactic rim. This is why we contemplated helping humanity, because you are the heirs of the Old Ones, through a more circuitous path. The details are debatable, but Alaitoc has accepted from discussion with your fleet, humanity is the second spawn of Terra."

There was silence for a time. A prior galactic power from Terra – no, not just _a_ galactic power, the greatest galactic power in history, the creator of the Eldar and perhaps – according to other legends Horus had heard – also the Orks and the Hrud. The ceratopsids, sapient, even technological; ended by an asteroid and volcanoes that were far from accidental. And this last alliance foretold by history, though indirectly. Minuscule odds, of course – although with the Warp, mere chance could not be relied on. And perhaps unengineered ecosystems were more creative.

"The depth…" Sanguinius marveled.

A beautiful idea. But it was time. "I have a speech to give," Horus said as the melody faded. "I do not know if I believe it myself, Autarch; yet I am honored that you would even consider the theory."

A few minor niceties, and then Horus and Sanguinius were walking through the hallways of the _Vengeful Spirit_ , Tandrith departing in the other direction to his warriors.

"I must learn to guard myself psychically," Lupercal said. "That, at least, is true."

"We guard ourselves – and our sons guard us – rather well physically," Sanguinius remarked. "Yet even that was barely enough, a week ago. The ethereal was always an easier method of attack. Nearly half of us fell to it. I will – must – make a sterner effort against that myself."

Some other things were said, but their relevance was faint, and some of them burned too brightly to overcontemplate. They wished each other luck in their upcoming campaigns, at least. Then Horus rose to the podium, Sanguinius stepping to the side, the Council of Catachan revealing itself before him. Only the most important dignitaries, admirals and administrators and Astartes, were present; yet they still stretched deep. This had been a massive endeavor, and it had succeeded, despite numerous challenges – succeeded in yielding a foundation, albeit tinted scarlet from the blood the wars of the Council had spilled, on which the Imperium would be reformed.

Now he drove the final stake into that foundation.

"My friends," Warmaster Horus Lupercal of the Coalition said, "of late we have reinvigorated an ancient custom – the farewell 'may you stay free'. The reason is simple; we are fighting against tyranny, and so an explicitly rebellious slogan fits well. But we stand for continuity nevertheless, thus the 'stay'; we do not deny the worth of an Imperium, and we recognize that there was a time – though it seems an eternity ago – when the Emperor was not yet mad. But even then, he could make mistakes."

"One of these," Horus continued, "was the Edict of Nikaea. Psychic powers are dangerous, it is true; but shackling them weakens us in offense, and offers us no benefits in defense, for an untrained psyker is even more dangerous than a trained one. It is no secret that many among the Adeptus Astartes have been openly disobeying this edict for some time, for it was clear the day of its abolishment was soon. But we must have more than the Astartes realize their full potential. The Imperium at large, in civilian and military life, must integrate psychic powers into life as we know it – as we have only partially begun with Astropaths and Navigators. Humanity's psychic potential is, I have been assured, increasing. We must be prepared, rather than blindly denying the obvious."

"And for this reason," Lupercal concluded, "by the powers invested in me as Warmaster, I hereby repeal the Edict of Nikaea."

* * *

TO BE CONTINUED in the ninth book of the Renegades Saga, _Flesh Is Weak_.


End file.
